Showing posts with label bedroom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bedroom. Show all posts

Saturday, 15 January 2011

The multitude of books is making us ignorant

Finally after much longing, planning and browsing charity shops, ebay and online catalogues I have my new bookshelves. Of course after all the delusional attempts at individuality I've opted for the simplest, most mass produced bookshelves known to bibliophiles - IKEA Billy in plain and simple white.


I'd worried my already cramped bedroom would have been somewhat overpowered - and I guess it us. But rather than monolithic the shelves are warm and colourful and their additional depth (double that of the books themselves) helps the room feel a little more spacious than it really is.

It was tremendous fun - dragging books from boxes I hadn't opened in years, remembering ideas and imagery from years ago. I've become such a lazy reader in the past few years, reading books from bestseller lists, thrillers and detective novels (I know, I know they have their merits - don't let it be said I underestimated Dashiell Hammett) and avoiding novels with subtler themes. Finding, for example, books from Caribbean writers and remembering the first rush of memories, colour and excitement I got from reading them for the first time was a real blast and rendered the hours of self assembly misfortune somewhat worth it.


I'll end now with another fairly new addition to my room - I'm just back from a wee trip to London and raided the British Museum and Natural History Museums for butterfly inspired postcards - I'm building up quite a collection and decided to stick a few on the wall.

I'm wrestling ethically with buying some framed taxidermy butterflies from Thailand via ebay. They are extremely beautiful and I'm not sure whether they could be mistreated - wouldn't the person using them just pick dead ones from the ground? At the same time I wouldn't kill an insect in my house unless absolutely necessary so framing insect corpses and hanging them on the wall is probably not ok.  I guess I know the answer is no and just need to accept it!

Ok so first ever blog done and dusted - I certainly had more to say than I'd expected (thought none of it particularly interesting). I was really planning to use the blog to publish some of my craft projects - quilting will be my next post  - until then adieu!!