Bookworm, Bookaholic or Bibliophile

I will answer to any of the above. I have rarely met a book I didn’t want to read. (Other than my school textbooks, of course)

I have written about this obsession love of mine before, and how I have recently started to really go through the books I have amassed over the years to do some pruning, as it were. Get it? Books have ‘leaves’ so I’m pruning?

It hasn’t been easy. I have a tendency to retain a death grip on my books. A book that was ho-hum or not that enjoyable is fairly easy to let go. Some were great and I knew I would enjoy reading them again, such as my Agatha Christies, Qwillieran books, and Janet Evanovich. A lot of the sci-fi books remain as well.

One thing that has always bugged me. Being in a place that uses books as decorations. Usually these are pretty old looking and you know they are there as theme books. I’ve been in restaurants that have had old books in displays. I want to take them down and look through them!! Or when I see a picture of a table with a stack of books as the table support, I dearly hope those books were read before they were glued together or drilled through! Lately, I’ve been watching Fixer Upper on HGTV, and Joanna Gaines uses lots of old books when she stages the house showings. I’ve seen this done on other home decorating shows. If I’d had my house done by Joanna Gaines, I would insist on at least looking through some of those books before she took them back.

I saw an ad on FB about ‘Books By The Foot’ and you can just imagine how my heart started racing at the idea of that! When I looked into it I was a bit disappointed that it was mainly geared toward decorators. If they wanted to stage a house or whatever and needed a certain color scheme of books for the shelves, this is where they would go. A red themed room could have all red books or a complementary color of books. If they wanted books that were all about the same size, ditto. The site did have genres as well, for someone serious about that kind of theme. At $7 a linear foot, you could get a fair number of books. I have no clue as to what the shipping would be, as it depends on several things.

As for all the altered books I make, I HAVE READ EVERY ONE OF THEM before I turned them into art!! And if I have deemed a book to be worth being read by others, I will donate it and get a different book to alter.

‘The Bookworm’ in Oroville is a wonderful place to find used books. And everything is in alphabetical order!! And Ron is super helpful and a fun guy to talk to. ‘The Bookstore’ in Chico is awesome, but their books aren’t in strict alpha order. Just by general letter. All the ‘D’ authors, all the ‘F’ authors, etc. ‘ABC Books’ in Chico is pretty good, too. My favorite one in the world is ‘A Book Barn’ in Clovis. THAT place is my Disneyland!! The people there are wonderful and very helpful in finding just what you’re looking for.  

There is NO excuse for not having something to read on hand AT ALL TIMES!!! I usually have 2-3 books going at any given time.

And of course, there is always your local public library, and school libraries. That’s where I got my start on this long and winding road. So far, I see no end in sight…

Now, as to what is wrong with the picture at the top…so many things!!!

She has a dog cuddled up with her instead of a cat.

There should be a light above her head to ease any chance of eye strain.

There is no small table by her elbow for her wine cooler (summer) or her hot toddy (winter).

There is no library ladder to access those top shelves, WHICH ARE SHAMEFULLY EMPTY!!! I mean REALLY!!! What are they there for IF NOT TO FILL WITH BOOKS?!?!?

Biggest fault of all: it’s a model laying there reading, NOT ME!!! *sob*