if like me
you find yourself
collecting more and more books to be read
never catching up
it’s time for a change in perspective
relax and let your book guilt go.
–
“think not of the books you’ve bought as a ‘to be read’ pile.
instead, think of your bookcase as a wine cellar.
you collect books to be read at the right time, the right place, and the right mood.”
-luc van donkersgoed
—
photo credit: food and wine magazine
(someone in a squirrel costume pretending to be me coming home from the ilbrary/bookstore)
it is national book month after all –
—
“with freedom, flowers, books and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”
-oscar wilde
The library in Puebla, Mexico has grown from 5,000 volumes in 1646 to more than 40,000 volumes now,
the majority of which date from before Mexico’s independence and is the oldest in the Americas.
—
“i cannot remember the books i’ve read any more than the meals i have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
-ralph waldo emerson
—
in honor of international book month
oh, how i love these tiny places
filled with books are just waiting to be discovered.
—
“i have lived a thousand lives and have loved a thousand loves.
i’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time, because i read.”
-george r.r. martin
—
glen arbor, michigan, usa – summer 2022
treasures
—
“there is space on everyone’s bookshelves for books we’ve outgrown but can’t give away.
they hold our youth between their pages.”
-enid blyton
(not me, just someone who also loves summer reading, but probably does not nod off like i do)
—
“here is this delicious book and the whole day, both yours.”
the true pleasure or summer reading lies not so much in the novel itself, the writer hildegarde hawthorne explained in 1907, but the choice to devote oneself to it. summer reading as we now know it emerged in the u.s. in the. mid-1800s, buoyed by an emerging middle class and the birth of another cultural tradition: the summer vacation.
—
Art credit: Couch on the Porch, Cos Cob, Frederick Childe Hassam, 1914
rereading one of my favorite books
well-worn/well-loved
dr. zhivago
sweeping epic set in russian history
extraordinary characters
extraordinary times
pasternak a poet
i would love for it to have
a different ending
for just one reading
yet know
it would not be
the story it was meant to be.
—
“literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people,
and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.”
-boris pasternak
“i believe in the magic of books.
i believe that during certain periods in our lives we are drawn to particular books-
whether it’s strolling down the aisles of a bookshop
with no idea whatsoever of what it is that we to want read
and suddenly finding the most perfect, most wonderfully suitable book staring us right in the face.
unblinking.
or a chance meeting with a stranger or friend
who recommends a book we would never ordinarily reach for.
books have the ability to find their own way into our lives. “
-cecelia ahern
has this happened to you?
—
image credit: min heo
how sweet to find this book
sitting outside on the window ledge of a downtown store
on a sunny saturday
just waiting for someone
to pick it up and take it home to read.
gratitude to the book fairies.
—
“books are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. books are humanity in print.”
-barbara w. tuchman
my next stack to climb.
—
“I will always find peace in rain and adventure in reading.”
-viola cn
I didn't have my glasses on.... 