Monday, August 23, 2010

Placement of Books

I recently finished reading a hard (yes, signed) copy of Jennifer Weiner’s Fly Away Home (see my previous blog from July for information on that) and now I have to determine where to put it because where you place reading material (books and magazines) in your home can tell a lot about you. People put reading material in their living room, their bedroom, their kitchen, hallways and even their bathroom (I won’t comment on that). Reading material is on coffee tables, book cases, shelves, magazine racks and sometimes just stacked on the floor. And I guarantee you that when someone comes into you home there are two things they are going to look at: photographs and what books you have on display.

I have books in my living room, bedroom and kitchen (kitchen consists of three cookbooks and a three ring binders with my own collection of recipes). I have bookcases were I place books (among other things) but I also place books on any table that might have shelf with it. And all these books are organized in a certain way.

In the living room, where I have my biggest bookcase, I have most of my hard bound copies of commercial fiction (some signed) and some non-fiction (mostly biographies) that I have read (this is where the signed Jennifer Weiner book is going). To me, that’s important. I don’t buy book to put on display just for decorating purposes. If someone asks, “Did you read this?” I want to honestly say yes because the minute you lie you know that person, who has read the book, will start asking questions that you can’t answer. Now, that’s not so say I don’t have books that I haven’t read, because I do. They are either piled on the nightstand or the floor next to my bed or in a bookshelf in my bedroom.

I also keep some books that would be considered “coffee table books” in my living room. I don’t actually keep anything on my coffee table but I have a shelf under it and that’s where I keep magazines and fun little gift books I’ve been given as gifts over the years.

I have two and a half book cases in my bedroom (the half is a stand I have a television on that just happens to have room for books). These are organized together by category and size. It is here that I have my books on writing, various paper back, political books that I haven’t gotten around to reading and various other types of books. I do have a few old (over 100 years old) and possibly rare books by Charlotte Bronte and Lucy Maud Montgomery (of the Anne of Green Gables series) that I will prominently put on display one of these days. I wish I had more of those, but old and rare book collecting is a very, very expensive hobby.

And I need to work really hard to keep the purchase of books in check. Because I can see things getting totally out of control to the point where I’m living in my car with just a pillow, a black Hefty bags of clothes and piles and piles of books all around me. It’s not a pretty picture.

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