I love to read, hence I love books. I’ve loved to read all my life, or at least since I first learned how. So if loving to read means loving books, loving books means I have lots of them.
Anyone who ever wants to get me a present knows that a trip to the bookstore is never out of order. Combine that with my own huge weakness for the written word, and there are books, hundreds of books, mostly in boxes stacked kind of, sort of neatly in my parents’ basement. I’ve been adding to these boxes for years in the hope that one day, I’d have enough room to display my books properly.
I may call my loft a shoebox for all kinds of reasons, but one of the reasons I love it is for the east wall in my living room, a wall beside the kitchen and big enough for plenty of bookshelves, housing plenty of books. The wall itself is chocolate brown, and only a few inches more than I needed to fit five Billy bookcases.
Billy is your standard bookshelf, the pride and joy of Ikea. Billy is sold in a variety of colours and sizes, and the espresso shelves looked great against the chocolate. Why shouldn’t they? Coffee and chocolate are already great pairings in life. Three of these shelves are 40cm wide, and two are 80cm, so I sequenced them thin, fat, thin, fat and thin. The two wide shelves hold nothing but books, while the three skinnys hold part books, part stuff.
I’m a huge fan of stuff. Some might call this a tendency towards packrat-itude, but I think the far better word is Collector. Collector of stuff, that’s me. Collector of stuff that only I could find totally cool, while others harbour their different, varying opinions. About my stuff, that is.
So among my cornucopia of stuff are vintage piano music books, cigar boxes, an old clock (unwound, the ticking drives me mental), a Pastis bottle from the side of the street in Paris, a Coca Cola bottle from the side of the street in Amman (I thought the logo in Arabic was hysterical), a blue tin filled with Czech letter stamps that, once upon a time, used to set newspaper typeface. Black & whites of dad’s mom, mom’s parents, and mom’s grandfather, my great-grandfather who sailed to America in the dawn of the 20th century and worked for a farmer named Louis.
In short, stuff that looks great next to books. Stuff that’s familiar; stuff that I love. On the floor next to my shelves, kind of offset in the corner, are two vintage wood & metal crates that held bottles of some sort during WWII. They now hold several bottles of red wine that I’m sure me and several guests will be enjoying over the coming months.
When all was said and done and my Book Stuff wall completed, I sat back to enjoy the view. I’m very happy with it.
4 comments:
I love Billy bookshelves. Fantastic! Sounds beautiful.
I am too a collector of stuff. I love stuff...doohickies if you will. I have a wall of doohickies in my office.
Your setup sounds delish! I love black and white pictures. They always make the people in them look super important, as if they were some well-known figure in history.
Natalie, they're hard to not like. Very basic, and all those colours! It's almost like buying shoes.
Common girl, viva stuff. Lord knows I have enough of it.
Queenie, that's just why I like black and white pictures, too. They make colour seem so run of the mill, no?
Post a Comment