Can there be too much bookcase porn?

One of the fun, and sometimes unexpected, things about blogging is what catches people's attention. I've written posts that I knew would get hits - the ones on The Hunger Games (first post, second post, third post) and Fifty Shades of Grey, for instance. And they did too... But then there have been others that have surprised me - such as the string of bookcase 'porn' posts. Obviously, given the nature of keywords and search engine functions, a search for 'porn' of any type is quite likely going to mean my posts land somewhere in the hierarchy of the search. But, they've also attracted the book junkies in goodly numbers, because, as I wrote in the first of the posts, we're none of us immune to drooling over photos of fabulous bookcases! You can find the other posts here and here...

So I figured (particularly in the light of comments that just landed on some of the older posts) it was time to post the pics I've been collecting over the last little while as I've come across them. There are some beauties in this lot. Enjoy!

I just realised there's a common theme in this lot - the whole floor to ceiling thing... That would have to be the ultimate book junkie fantasy, I think - a room where the bookcases can do just that - and all the more fun for having to have a ladder to get to the uppermost ones!

Floating bookcases

How DID we find all sorts of random things before we had Facebook? I'm not a true Facebook junkie - in that my whole life isn't plastered all over my wall. I figure people have better things to do than follow the mundane ins and outs of my life day by day. I do love playing Scrabble and have a number of games on the go all the time. I do use it to keep in touch with overseas friends. And I do love the random things that pop up from time to time, including this VERY cool idea for floating bookcases, which honestly wouldn't have occurred to me if I'd not seen it there. Follow this link for the whole collection of fun DIY projects:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/31-insanely-easy-and-clever-diy-projects

Use Bookends as Floating Bookshelves

Book hangovers

When I did the post on the A-Z quiz, one of the questions was about book hangovers. Book junkie I may be, but I'd never come across this phrase, so I was a bit at a loss, as was the person who'd done the quiz before me on her blog. Someone on her comments list provided an explanation, so I dealt with my quiz differently than she did. Today, The Librarian posted this meme on Facebook, and I couldn't resist popping it up here. Which book gave you YOUR last book hangover?

A-Z book survey

There's a book survey floating around the blogosphere, and it's kinda fun, so thought I'd have a play with it. I saw it on At the Edge of Ordinary and then followed links to the blogs that writer follows - quite fascinating seeing how others answer the questions.

So, here goes:


Author you've read the most books from: Tricky - I'm basing this on the fact that this author has the biggest series I've read (and re-read) - Elsie J. Oxenham. It's not that she's my favourite author of all time, she's just written more books than most authors I read!

Best sequel ever: The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. My Name is Asher Lev documents Asher's childhood and growing up as an artist and observant Jew. The sequel is a powerful story where for any number of reasons he could have walked away from Judaism, but doesn't...continuing his struggle to live as both people, and dealing with what both ask of him.

Currently reading: Noel Streatfield by Angela Bull - marvelous biography of this amazing children's author. It always makes me crave her adult fiction, none of which I've ever been able to find, let alone read!

Drink of choice while reading: Tea, usually. Wine, occasionally if it's late in the day!

E-reader or physical book: Book, always. Have never read a digital version of a book and don't intend to.

Fictional character you probably would have dated in high school: Gilbert Blythe from L.M. Montgomery's Anne books! The gorgeous Gilbert - who won Anne in the end...

Glad you gave this book a chance: This is tricky. Probably April Fool's Day by Bryce Courtenay. I don't like his books, generally. I admired his success, but I didn't enjoy what felt to me like books written to a formula. April Fool's Day is the book he promised his son Damon, who died of medically acquired AIDS, he would write. It's a very different beast to all his other books in its utter raw honesty. I kept this one - I don't own any of his others.

Hidden gem book: The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden. The story of a half gypsy child left orphaned after the death of her grandmother, and her subsequent adoption by a single woman in a small English village. This is one of Godden's books that sits across the adult/children's literature divide. An exquisite little gem that I first came across in condensed form in a Readers Digest anthology, and much later acquired in its full length version.

Important moment in your reading life: Reading Anne Frank's diary, aged 8, and realising that not all books were stories - some of them were real people!

Just finished: A Vicarage Family and Beyond the Vicarage by Noel Streatfield - the first and third of her ficionalised autobiographical trilogy. The second is called Away from the Vicarage and I'm still hunting a copy. Interesting to be going on with Angela Bull's actual biography and making the comparisons of real events and those fictionalised for this series.

Kinds of books you won't read: Vampires! DB loves the Anne Rice books, and gave me one to read, telling me how awesome it was. I did try, truly I did. But, it left me cold - and I couldn't even finish it! Graphic novels don't do it for me either.

Longest book you've read: Shogun by James Clavell, I think... I'm not really one for huge door stoppers. I'd rather read a long series than one humungous book - don't know why that is!

Major book hangover because of: A book hangover - for those who don't know - is finishing a book but not being able to get out of the world it created for you....from a comment on another blog where the blogger asked what on earth a book hangover was - which was also my question. Maybe I'm permanently in a state of book hangover! I certainly seem to have characters from books hanging around for ages after I've finished a book. Perhaps my biggest one was when I was reading for an undergraduate paper about Dora Carrington - partner of Lytton Strachey, who was one of the Bloomsbury group. I read biogs of ALL the Bloomsburys, and I had them all hovering for nearly a semester!

How many bookcases do you own: Currently, four. Bought when I moved in with DB after selling off my motley collection of pine bookcases acquired over many years as the collection grew. However, I'm looking at purchasing maybe three more...possible four...to enable me to get the rest of my books out of storage now we have room for more!!

One book you have read multiple times: Oh Lordy....ALL my books!! The ones I re-read the most... everything I own by Chaim Potok, L.M. Montgomery, Elsie J. Oxenham, Rumer Godden, John Wyndham, Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer - and that's only the tip of the iceberg!

Preferred place to read: Curled up someplace quiet and comfortable. In our old apartment, that was my nest of pillows on the couch. Here, I've not yet worked out the best spot. I have a room of my own - perhaps when I have that properly set up, that will be the place...

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feel from a book you read: This is from The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, and comes towards the end when David is asked by Sophie if he loves Rosalind. There is a specific context in the novel, but beyond that, this quote embodies everything about love for a partner for me:

A word again... When the minds have learnt to mingle, when no thought is wholly one's own, and each has taken too much of the other ever to be entirely himself alone; when one has reached the beginning of seeing with a single eye, loving with a single heart. enjoying with a single joy; when there can be moments of identity and nothing is separate save bodies that long for one another... When there is that, where is the word? There is only the inadequacy of the word that exists.

Reading regret:  That a lifetime won't be long enough to read everything I want to read!

Series you started and need to finish (all books are out in the series): The Abbey Books by Elsie J. Oxenham. I have lots of them, but all the ones I don't have are long out of print and incredibly rare. Both the Girls Gone By publishers and the British Abbey Girls Society have rights to re-publish many of the scarce titles, but it will be a long time before they get them all out.

Three of your all-time favourite books: Oy...only three?! The Asher Lev books (yes, I know, that's two, but you can't read one without the other so I'm counting them as one!), The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, and....ooooh....A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Greene. That leaves SO many out...seriously!!

Unapologetic fangirl for: 'Fangirl' ACK!! Horrible term... Buuuut - lots of vintage children's literature - favourite authors: Elsie J. Oxenham, Dorita Fairlie Bruce, L.M. Montgomery, Hesba Brinsmead, Ruth M. Arthur, Honor Arundel, K.M. Peyton, and oodles more (the bookshelves are downstairs, and I'd have to go down to make a list...).

Very excited about this release more than all others: The second in Maggie Anton's new trilogy, Rav Hisda's Daughter. Her Rashi's Daughters trilogy is magnificent, and the Rav Hisda's Daughter trilogy, based on having read the first of them, looks likely to be as good. Waiting, waiting, waiting...

Worst bookish habit: Buying books and more books... I'm hopeless with libraries - I borrow, and then forget to take them back, so I get fined... So, I buy them instead. I'm getting WAY more selective now, so I have a much smaller pile that will go on to their second homes via second hand bookstores!

Your latest book purchase: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (interesting interview with the author in the weekend before last's papers that got me intrigued) and The Full Ridiculous by Mark Lamprell (recommended by a friend the same weekend), both purchased this Monday.

ZZZ-snatcher book (the last book that kept you up WAY late): Hmmm...it's been a while since I did this. Can't remember. I used to do this all the time when I lived alone. I don't do it so much these days because I'm exhausted by the end of the day. More what happens is that I'm up in the wee smalls due to pain, and I'm reading at 3 or 4 in the morning having been asleep for a while.

Well, THAT was fun. One thing it didn't ask was HOW you read - I tend to go on a bit of jag reading everything I have of a single author until I've got through all of them. That's one of my re-reading patterns. My purchasing patterns are a bit more eclectic. Anything here match up with your reading habits? Let me know in a comment!

More books....gotta have more books....

The Librarian posted this meme on Facebook yesterday, and it cracked me up - it's only people who AREN'T book junkies that don't get this:

I made a decision yesterday though... I had some time to kill before an appointment and I was in Double Bay...location of one of my favourite indi book shops. I found two of the books on my current list right inside the door, so it was a very simple operation. I did think though, that it's time to impose a bit of a budget on the book purchasing - not that I go berserk. There isn't enough spare cash to do that at the moment. However, restacking the books on Saturday reminded me of particular gaps in the collection, which will require hunting second hand shops and eBay. So, I think I can safely say that it's not just about wanting more books. It's wanting more particular books!

Moving house - AGAIN!

It seems we are quintessential wandering Jews! We moved again on the weekend... Seventeen had the final exam of his school career, so we didn't need to live so close to his school any more, and we were craving the space of a house after years of apartments. So, we have left the Eastern Suburbs for a location a little further afield, although, we still - in terms relative to Sydney's great sprawl - live pretty close in.

And so, as all book junkies know, there was the Moving of the Books to deal with (thank you Seventeen and DB), and the great Bookcase Re-arrange... The living room in the new place has two parts, so the inner section is going to be a combination of library and creative space. On Saturday morning, it looked like this:

Then The Valkyrie arrived to help me get sorted. You'd think, given I can, once the books are in place, go to the shelves with my eyes closed and put my hand on the book I want, that I'd remember where they sat and the re-stacking would be a very simple operation. But no...it's amazing how quickly the order of the alphabet can escape the brain when one is tired and over the confusion of moving! However, by the end of the day it looked like this:

In the corner behind where I stood to take this pic, there are several large stacks of books - in the eighteen months in our previous place, the collection grew... Also, the rest of my books have been in storage for about three years now, and it's time to pull them out now that there's enough space for bookshelves to accommodate them. The few things that have already been brought out of the storage unit have shown some evidence of damp, so I'm not happy to leave the books there any longer. DB made a few less than happy noises when I mentioned the need to buy more bookcases - I plan on running them around the corner so they meet at the left hand end where the paintings are currently stacked - but I don't think he was being too serious.

It WILL be nice to be able to spread out, and if things go according to plan this will, hopefully, be our last rented place. The next move will be to something we buy, which will be chosen with library space on the priority list - and new, SOLID TIMBER bookcases to be built in....oooh, the luxury!!

A girl's gotta dream...

My Side of the Mountain - Jean George

My Side of the Mountain is one of my all time favourite kid's books. My current copy is a Puffin paperback that I have to read very carefully, because it's falling apart - literally. There are great chunks of it that will fall out if I'm not careful because the glue has gone...

The cover illustration is by David McAllister, but one of the lovely things is that all the illustrations inside are by Jean George herself. It is, I think, my second copy - the first one also fell apart. One day, who knows, I may stumble across a hard cover edition that will last!

This is a classic adventure story. Sam Gribley is growing up in New York, crammed in an apartment with his parents and eight siblings. His father was a sailor, until all children were born, and he got a job on the docks so he could stay at home. However, there's the story of Grandfather Gribley's farm in the Catskill mountains... So, one May, armed with a penknife, a ball of string, an axe and $40, Sam sets off to find the farm and try living on the land... He's not exactly sure where the farm is, so he gets rides (this is back in the days when hitch-hiking was less dangerous than it is now...) to a town in the foothills and with the help of the local librarian, finds a survey map of the area to locate the farm boundaries.

His first night on the mountain is a disaster. He does manage to catch a fish, and build himself a shelter but he's on the wrong side of the mountain and at the mercy of the cold winds. He fails utterly to get a fire lit with his flint and steel, and spends a miserably cold night out. Next morning, he finds a house, begs to cook his fish, and passes out in the warmth of the fire! The old man feeds him when he wakes up, teaches him how to get a fire started, and he's off again. 

Once he finds the old farm site, he investigates the possibilities for a permanent dwelling. He knows that one of the reasons he's been able to get as far as he has is because none of his family have taken him seriously, and probably expected him home within a day or so. Not Sam; HE intends to set up and live on the mountain - he loves his family, but he doesn't like the crammed apartment, he doesn't like the hurley burley of New York, and he wants to prove that a Gribley CAN live on the land, in the face of his father's insistence that the Gribleys are for the sea.

As Sam builds his house in a huge hemlock tree that he hollows out, learns the resources of his immediate neighbourhood, and begins to make cautious 'friends' with local wildlife, it becomes apparent that this is no impulsive running away - he's been preparing and has done lots of reading and learning about wild foods and various bush craft skills. The summer bounty makes it relatively easy to trap small game and find fresh growing edibles, but to survive the winter, Sam is going to have to make a door for his tree, find some way of heating it, store enough food, and make warmer clothing for himself. That means getting a deer, as the small game he can catch can't provide him with big enough skins. He also, on a trip back up the mountain from the nearby town, spots falcons, and decides that getting a young one to train will help make him more independent as well as providing company.

He is nearly discovered a few times - first by a fire ranger who he spots looking around his 'yard' out the front of his tree just in time, and backs off so as not to be found. Then, in the wake of the sound of distant sirens, he comes back from a foraging trip to find a strange man asleep next to his fireplace...for a little while, he thinks the man is a fugitive from the law, but it turns out he is just a college professor on holiday who got himself lost while out walking. Bando, as Sam christens him (and is christened reciprocally, Thoreau), ends up staying with Sam for the rest of his holiday. They make jam from the blueberries that are in abundance, and willow whistles to play tunes. Bando promises he'll try and come back for Christmas - AND keep an eye on the papers in case any rumours get out about him living on the mountain, so he can begin a counter rumour to save Sam being discovered and sent home. Because, stories are starting to circulate about the 'wild boy' living on the mountain. The hunters - from whom Sam has quite a time dodging, although he manages to find enough of their deer that they don't find after shooting it to make a set of clothes, in addition to the door on his tree - report missing game; an old lady who lives in a nearby town surprises Sam the day she comes up the mountain to pick wild strawberries; a cub reporter, hoping for a scoop, tracks him down; and he stumbles across a musician holidaying in the mountains and they spend an afternoon swapping tunes. However, Sam is pretty content with his solitude, and settles in for the winter. 

Christmas comes, the snow lies deep on the mountain, and Sam starts to wonder if Bando will make it. He does, and to add to the festive cheer, Sam's father also turns up on Christmas morning. Spurred on by the rumours and odd stories that appear in the newspapers, as well as Sam's mother's worry, he comes looking for Sam to make sure he's really all right. When spring comes, other changes come too. A boy Sam bumps into in the town on one of his trips into the library asks to come and stay on the mountain and Sam agrees. He realises that his life probably can't stay as it is, and then one day his father comes back...with the whole family! His mother tells him that she realises he's OK, but he's under age, and he needs to be with his family, but instead of dragging him back to New York, the whole family come to live on the old farm site - Sam's father having realised during his Christmas stay that Gribleys can belong on the land as well, and growing up on the mountain will be good for everyone.

This is a classic adventure story from an era when life was much simpler than it is these days, and I think it's one of the reasons I enjoy reading it so much. There is a lot of solid wood lore - believe me, I've looked up all the plants and crafts Sam uses over the years, and Jean George knows her stuff! I grew up partly in the country, and there's more of me that belongs there than in a city, so books like this take me back to memories of making jam and chutneys from summer fruits to last through to the next fruiting season, making our own clothes, and generally taking life at a much gentler pace than contemporary city life often allows. I don't know if the book is still in print, but it's definitely worth hunting out on Ebay or other sites if you have kids who read - or even if they don't... This book might get them started - if you haven't got it stashed away for your own quiet time!