the library

“When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

―Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

 What do they call this room I ask the man showing us the house we purchased last year. It was a room off the living room through double wooden doors. "A parlour?", he suggests. From that very first day I called  this room the library. And plans began forming in my mind almost immediately to the possibilities of making this such a room, walls lined with built in book shelves, an antique bookcase on that wall filled with books, comfy chairs with reading lamps, and maybe even a footstool.  Of course, I've had libraries of sorts all my life, wherever or whatever held my large assortment of books was considered a make-do library. And certainly this past year a majority of books have been stored in boxes on the third floor awaiting my vision to become a reality. At last I have a lovely room that embraces the afternoon sun on cloudless days, making it a perfectly wonderful place to be christened "The Library".

 “Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books— even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.”

  ~William Gladstone

I have a friend whose husband was starting a new business and was very capable and interested in building us book shelves.

Some days I have my lunch at the table that sits in the center of the room.

"In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” 
― Mark Twain

 One Sunday afternoon, a berry clafoutis with hazelnut whipped cream  with "delightful society". My husband was there too😊, and he is certainly delightful society.

"A house that has a library in it has a soul." - Plato