Curled up with a good book

My bungalow has a cosy little library. It’s nothing fancy, just a sofa and two chairs surrounded by shelves and shelves of books, photographs and art created by several artists I admire.

The books are either older or rich with images. When it is just words, I accept the convenience of an e-book, yet I can’t imagine having a 21st. century library, filled with comfortable furniture aplenty but not a physical book in sight. I am too much in love with coloful bindings. I also find that books about making art or actually about making anything work better in the physical form. Bookmarks are too awkward in e-books, when you can’t see all of them at once, and recognize them by their color, placement, or form.

When the pandemic first struck, I found that I couldn’t read fiction at all. I felt like I had to keep strict control over my thoughts, and reading fiction has always been about letting your mind wander free and letting the book come deep into your thoughts. I was afraid of what else might seep into my thoughts.

After a couple of months, I am adjusting to the new normal and I felt that I could trust myself to read fiction. I went with something safe and comforting: old novels that I had read before and thus had the visual landscape in my mind already. I began with Phoebe Atwood Taylor/Alice Tilton/Freeman Dana. These novels are set in Boston and Cape Cod and take place in the 1930s and 40s.

Yet, I find that I cannot read the latter part of my mother’s beloved My Friend series by Jane Duncan because life on a sugar plantation, with its overt racism, completely horrifies me.  I think I will only re-read her novels set at Reachfar in Scotland.

I have been reading some newer books as well. The Aunt Dimity series  by Nancy Atherton soothes me.  It’s a cozy mystery series, and things work out for the best at the end of each book. That’s what I need to read: people who are caring, people who fix injustices, and plots that have happy endings. We cannot make a better society by delving too deep into its worst ills. We must visualize a better world and then bring it to fruition. For my sanity, I must concentrate on attracting what is right, and oppose, but not dwell on, what is not.

About today’s photos. They are from various iterations of my library at Maplehurst, The Aerie, and here at the Jolly Bungalow. Yes, the books really are arranged by color now. When I’m looking for a book I tend to recall its title and know the color of the binding and its approximate size. So when I’m looking fthe or my copy of Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley I know that it is a slim volume bound in blue cloth. 

When I moved to The Aerie, my mother commented that I should just sort my books by color and save myself a lot of time in looking for a title. And so I did. She knew that color is my first language.