So many books, so little time…

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.
– William Styron

My Pothos plant keeping watch over a few of my next reads.

Books, flowers and the Moon

Inside the mind of another person

One for Thursday

 

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A niche to dream in

"Plain shelves filled with good editions in good bindings are more truly decorative than ornate bookcases lined with tawdry books."
- Edith Wharton, 1902



Adults love inviting nooks just as children do; such spaces seem protective, made for the imagination. A place apart, where you can gather notes, thoughts and plans. It's simply the idea of a silence in one's self that allows one to think or to feel. Creating a corner where that silence can happen - even in the busiest of households - calls for beauty like the shelf above.

Setting up a reading nook or dreaming niche for yourself is as exciting as building a new house! Lovingly storing your favourite books and stationery in one place where you can relax with a cup of coffee, snuggling under a warm throw, is one of life's blissful pleasures.

Reading is one of the great pleasures of life and an important part of nurturing our soul, gaining knowledge and finding pleasure in fiction. As such, we must make special time for ourselves to pursue our pleasures and make it high on our list of priorities.

Whether you are lucky enough to have a library filled with books and comfortable couches or choose to use a bay window area, filled with light, or a special corner in your bedroom, your reading nook will be YOUR private hide-out where no-one is allowed in except by invitation.



Your first consideration should be a comfortable chair or chaise lounge embellished with all the luxuries like cushions and throws. A coffee or side table will come in handy for a reading lamp, tea pot, some fresh flowers, reading glasses and some extra books.

Incorporating some shelves or a bookshelf for storage of your books and favourite collections is next on the list. Be creative and innovative with your bookshelf - fill blank spaces on the shelves with candles (in case the electricity goes off!) and some of your favourite photo frames. Fill a vintage jug with some pens and pencils for making notes and have a dictionary at hand for reference.

Some extras like a footstool and magazine rack always come in handy and a soft rug underfoot adds a luxurious touch. Also give some attention to the wall colour - find a soothing theme and hang some of your favourite paintings and artwork as a finishing touch.


A corner in the living room used as a reading nook.


A bookshelf and a comfortable chair on one side of the dining room denotes this as someone's dream corner.


Storage for some favourite books


A perfect reading nook
- image from decor8

So settle in with a creamy cup of coffee, your favourite book or your daily journal and enjoy the simple pleasures of life - don't get to the end of your life and find that you have just lived the length of it. You want to have lived the width of it as well.

 

The pleasures of life!

A cup of coffee and one of my Nature Journals – two of the great pleasures of life! I’ve been journaling since child-hood, when I wrote about and sketched little things I found in the garden, about my pets, and important dates like friends’ birthdays and little poems I would add to birthday cards I made for them. When I became a teenager, my journals were my solace for broken hearts, my miseries and joys and ‘important’ happenings in my life, always accompanied by sketches, collages and leaves and grasses I found in nature.

In later life my Nature Journal recorded dates and sketches of my animals, the plants and insects in my garden and any interesting info I learnt along the way. I found the coffee to be important during ‘thinking’ spells, always reaching out for the cup when I paused in thought. And oh! how many times don’t I put my paint brush in my coffee in stead of the water bowl, adding a bit of interest to the sketches!

In the noisy confusion of life...

… keep peace in your soul

It’s been so long since I’ve taken the time to just sit and read.
Curl op on the sofa with a nice cup of tea and just read.
I’ve realised that it’s a choice I made and that I now have the choice to rectify this.
Just another gift to be grateful for.

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Wishing you a week filled with time to read.

Are paper books a thing of the past?

Now they say that the book is threatened, to be replaced by e-readers and morphed into multi-media presentations. So, what am I to do? Am I a dinosaur? Am I crippled by nostalgia? Does my wish that the book remain intact and strong take me down the road to irrelevancy? Should I adapt and become more media savvy? Should I blog and create miniature films for Youtube? Should I give up the life I have led, making a living and making sense of my life by books?

One problem I have with e-books is that they are not books. They only look like books. Dictionaries say that the word "book" goes back to the word "beech," the wood first used for writing down ancient runes. A traditionalist like me would say that you need paper or another wood product to have a book.

In our modern way of thinking, we believe we can separate the contents of a book from the material it's written on and bound with. We think of a book as information. But anyone who loves books knows that the book is what you hold in your hand and put on a shelf. A library honours a book and easily turns into a sacred place, somewhere where you can pick and choose a book, be entranced by its leather-bound cover and feel the weight in your hands.

I hope libraries don't become museums for the old technologies of the book. I don't think they have to be. I hope we keep producing books. I think they can co-exist with e-readers because they are not just about information. They're like pianos and antiques and oil paintings - revered, collectable - superseded in some ways by new technologies, but not obliterated. I hope that bookstores will discover how to honour books and continue to sell them. Maybe our pragmatic use of the e-reader, easier to travel with and fun to play with for its media potential, will shift, and soon we'll realize what is so precious about a book. Maybe a book is easier to ensoul than a piece of electronic technology.

The power of reading

Curling up with a book and a cup of hot coffee on a cold winter night may not sound like fun to some people out there, but those of us who are addicted to reading know just how wonderful it feels to lose yourself into a whole new world. I was exposed to books at a very young age, when my father would clutter this cupboards and every available space with books ranging in subject anywhere from gardening to history to science to law and dozens of encyclopaedias. It was therefore only natural that I grew up loving the printed matter and as a child I read just about anything from comics and newspapers to books to magazines.

Reading offers both pleasure and information and benefits will always come to those who read, whether they are consciously aware of it or not. Reading always works its magic, regardless of who you are and what is it that you are reading.

The most wonderful thing that reading offers is a peep into another world. when you pick up a book and lose yourself into it, its like you have transcended your present situation. This temporary escape from our routine life is of great significance when it comes to your mental health. We all have day-to-days tasks to take care of, and many a times we go to bed all tense and frustrated and sometimes just downright bored with life. This is when reading comes to our rescue and we should welcome it with open arms if we truly want to be happy and alive.

Reading is a great imagination booster and it helps develop a sense of creativity in you. It was after reading Jonathan Livingstone Seagull that I was inspired to paint seagulls, amazing birds that I have always watched with glee when I go to the coast. Reading is also educational - many a time I’ve come across a word I’ve never heard which ensued in looking it up in the dictionary or on Google - I’ve learnt some amazing stuff!

Reading offers us a chance to see the world from someone else's eyes, thus broadening our horizons and opening our minds to new possibilities. Don't ever forget the words of Sir Richard Steele, who said, "Reading is to mind what exercise is to the body".