Sometime in the century before Christ, Marcus Tullius Cicero stated that 'A Room without Books is like a Body without a Soul.' As books were a lot rarer and more expensive back then, I feel he was being exceptionally snobbish.
While I don't quite hold with his statement - I know plenty of rooms without books and with a lot of soul, the quote has been floating around pinterest and I have promptly pinned it. Knowing me, I've pinned it a few times.
While I don't believe a room without books lacks soul, I do find rooms with books a lot more homely, friendly, comfortable. I feel more at ease: among kin.
On finding a room containing books I look eagerly towards them and at the first opportunity scoot my way over, hoping to meet dear old friends or make new friends. What I find on the shelves either brings me closer to the rooms owner or makes me hope the books were wrongfully borrowed, a mistake.
While I know it is not ideal to judge someone on the contents of their bookshelves, some books will definitely infuse me with a rosy glow of fellowship towards the owner... and others... will not.
As I blogged yesterday, we have moved the kids beds from our bedroom into their very own room, and in their place I have placed books and a bookshelf from the family beach house.*
Old friends have returned to me and I clutch them happily to me, run my fingers over them tenderly.
"Look, look love. We have a bookshelf in our room!" I tell my beloved gleefully.
He has stolen the bottom shelf for his medicine books, but I still look across and see my precious ones, a discordant medley collected over decades. A treasure house of memories and stories.
I grew up among books - books lining the walls, in piles upon the floors. We tended to already own all my english text books. Any period of history I wished to know about I would look around the books at home and find a pile of resources. Now, with my books neatly shelved in my room once more (there were always piles on the floor of course) I feel a deep content.
Dear friends, hello, how good to see you again!
*There is talk of renting the beach house out during months family are not holidaying, so we retrieved treasures left from when my beloved and I lived there. Possibly my treasures were safer with renters than destructive toddlers... but I have noticed books go missing at beach houses, and there are many I would be sad to have disappear and would find hard to replace. There is still, of course, a bookshelf crammed with books, just not my darlings.
While I don't quite hold with his statement - I know plenty of rooms without books and with a lot of soul, the quote has been floating around pinterest and I have promptly pinned it. Knowing me, I've pinned it a few times.
While I don't believe a room without books lacks soul, I do find rooms with books a lot more homely, friendly, comfortable. I feel more at ease: among kin.
On finding a room containing books I look eagerly towards them and at the first opportunity scoot my way over, hoping to meet dear old friends or make new friends. What I find on the shelves either brings me closer to the rooms owner or makes me hope the books were wrongfully borrowed, a mistake.
While I know it is not ideal to judge someone on the contents of their bookshelves, some books will definitely infuse me with a rosy glow of fellowship towards the owner... and others... will not.
As I blogged yesterday, we have moved the kids beds from our bedroom into their very own room, and in their place I have placed books and a bookshelf from the family beach house.*
Old friends have returned to me and I clutch them happily to me, run my fingers over them tenderly.
"Look, look love. We have a bookshelf in our room!" I tell my beloved gleefully.
He has stolen the bottom shelf for his medicine books, but I still look across and see my precious ones, a discordant medley collected over decades. A treasure house of memories and stories.
I grew up among books - books lining the walls, in piles upon the floors. We tended to already own all my english text books. Any period of history I wished to know about I would look around the books at home and find a pile of resources. Now, with my books neatly shelved in my room once more (there were always piles on the floor of course) I feel a deep content.
Dear friends, hello, how good to see you again!
*There is talk of renting the beach house out during months family are not holidaying, so we retrieved treasures left from when my beloved and I lived there. Possibly my treasures were safer with renters than destructive toddlers... but I have noticed books go missing at beach houses, and there are many I would be sad to have disappear and would find hard to replace. There is still, of course, a bookshelf crammed with books, just not my darlings.
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