Books, Books Books..............

As I may have mentioned before, I have a love affair with books. I have hundreds of them, too many to count. Over the last 40 years I have collected many, many and although I buy very few these days unless they are 1p on Amazon or found in a charity shop, I still love browsing them.
Many people have a different attitude to books, reading them once and giving them to charity (for which I am eternally grateful), and much as I have nothing against this - each to their own - I am a collector of them and am happy to re-read most of them over and over again, which is why I don't throw them away (obvious exceptions are books that I didn't enjoy). In my youth, I had three bookcases crammed full in my bedroom, which I left there when I went away to Music College. The time came when my parents wanted to clear the room and because, being a student, I didn't have room for them, most of them went to charity - something I am still sad about 20 years later, as there were some gems that I have never had again. I have never made that mistake since.
I love the feel of them, all sitting together on a shelf - Stephen King, squashed up against Daphne du Maurier and Howard Spring, with the tiny Collins Gem Book of Card Games at the side, (I am not terribly organised with them, enjoying the higgledy-piggledy nature of them) - all containing their own stories, their own people, just waiting to be brought to life when I reach to get one down. For some reason that is why an e-reader doesn't appeal to me. Yes, they are useful and mean you don't have to store books, they are light, easy to take a whole library away with you, yes, there are plenty of advantages and I have tried reading a book on one (my mother's), but to me they don't have the soul of a book. I love turning the pages by hand, I love the paper with the nice font written on it, and the feel of a book. I even love the way they all look together on a shelf. If I ever have any money (unlikely) I would convert my garage into a library with floor to ceiling bookshelves on every wall.
As it is, I have books crammed into every space.

In the bedroom, here you will find a real mix, comedy, thriller, murder mystery, romance, horror.

By the bed, all the books I may reach for in the night if I can't sleep, usually short stories and ghost novels.

In the spare room, on the right is my collection of the complete Agatha Christie in beautiful hardback edition (£25 on e-bay - bargain) and classic novels, and on the left a real hotchpotch.

Oversized books are in the kitchen, mostly cooking and gardening, a bit of DIY and anything else too big to fit elsewhere.

Even one of the kitchen cupboards has recipe books crammed next to jars of pasta and rice.

Jane Austen stands behind the day's post.

So it was that the time had come for me to find a new place for the piles of books that had developed around the house that had no home yet. I decided to build a new, small bookcase yesterday, to slot nicely in the hall and hold small sized paperbacks.

Total cost - £12

Bought enough wood, measured it out to fit precisely and screwed it together and put a nice, decorative front onto it.

Stained it dark oak, so that it matched the other colours in the room, then polished with a good wax polish.

And problem solved.

I am delighted with it, very low cost, and now these poor souls have a home. What's more, they are in order (for now).

Of course there is still no room for any more books that may just find their way into my home. Oh well, I am sure I will find another spot when the time comes......