The title of this post does not refer to an ironically named college bar, but rather to my nerdy dream: to have my own library.
It’s not my fault. I grew up with this:
And this:
Why, hello, ancient Western culture!
But wait — there’s more!
And this:
That empty spot is where the records (LPs) should be. I surreptitiously lifted them all to cut them to .mp3 for Dad’s new iPod. And mine.
Still more:
There literally are three more walls of bookshelves I have not yet shown you, but I will stop now because you get it, despite the fact that these pictures were taken with my crappy phone camera. That’s a whole lotta books.
This is my Dad’s library. I grew up surrounded by books, books cluttering every horizontal surface, and that’s pretty much the way I live now.
I blame genetics.
The Big M built me a beautiful wall of bookshelves at our old house.
That ceiling hits 16 feet at its highest point, but these shelves were not nearly enough to contain all of my literature. I purged more than 200 books to get most of my collection to fit in there. And they never really fit, unless you call a double-shelved haphazard mess fitting. The Big M didn’t. But he was nice about it.
Now that we’re in the new house (new to us as of December 2007), most of my books have lived in the attic and in closets and on various mismatched shelves and horizontal surfaces in three different rooms. The dream has been to put all of them in our own home library. (And by proxy, to have a house that looks like something off of a design show on HGTV.)
The new house has an office, a room perfect for this end. And I am happy to announce that after two years of planning, designing, hiring a contractor, hiring a new contractor, redesigning, and hiring subcontractors …
we’re almost there.
It’s looking like the final project may be unveiled in a few weeks. And I can’t freakin’ wait. I’ll update with pictures as it progresses.
Categories: The Library
Flabby Brain 
Go, Lynn, go!!
Someday when I’m feeling brave, I’ll post a picture of my books on my site. I probably have 500 books and maybe another 100 cookbooks. If I retired tomorrow and read until the day I die, I still wouldn’t get through them all. What’s up with that? Seriously? Amazon is like crack cocaine to me. I need help.
I hear you. I even have an Amazon Visa card so that all of my credit card points can go toward purchasing more books. I have an addiction. Admission is the first step, right?
You forgot about the books dad hides in his bedroom…
And the extra shelves in there. Not to mention that he has read about 98% of all of those books at least once.
Ah, the gift and curse of a not-so-flabby brain – trying to find space for all these books. I have five bookcases worth – not an easy thing, in a one-bedroom apartment – and that doesn’t count the books I didn’t unpack from when I first got here.
That said, there is an even worse curse – moving with all these books. While I’m aching for August to come, I’m not envying that part of it.