A Good Book and a Good Bookshelf

I have decided to read more in 2010. Textbooks, novels, comics, even essays. Anything worth reading, really, has a chance.

I am a woman head-over-heels for the idea of reading, but typically end up browsing bookshelves and jacket covers more often than digging deeply into the soil of a tome. Somehow it is often enough to simply know the chapters, the story, the knowledge is out there – that someone knows it, and if I chose to read about the history of Table Salt (for example) I would have no trouble finding resources.

Today I picked up “Love in the Time of Cholera.” I am 100% intrigued: a classic by a Nobel Prize winner and friend of Fidel Castro. Peace and a socialist dictator...

On a side note, I read this book, "Fidel Castro" on the left a year or so ago, and highly recommend it...not as a fan of the man, but someone interested in passionate people.

(Notice the book in the middle: this was actually a photo I printed and used as a thank you card, 2009)

Perhaps as important as the book itself is the "bookends:" the Bookshop, and the Bookshelf.

There are so many delightful bookshops in Seattle – as a city we pride ourselves in our literacy. We are geniuses. I will only take a moment to mention one of my favorites and also one tittering precariously on the brink of closure: Elliott Bay Book Company.

Located in the guts of Pioneer Square, I’m always surprised the books are not misted from the Puget Sound just blocks away. The narrow alleyways lined with fascinating volumes remind me of the ancient streets in Fez, Morocco. Dark, rich, whispering and wonderful.

(Photo of my friend, Phil, in the alleys of Fez on a trip in 2007)

This bookstore hosts most of the most prominent authors who come to our city. (check out their website for events coming up). Grab a cup of coffee downstairs, and don't forget their "used" section right next door.

And now to the bookshelves. I have found that a few homemade shelves, painted a pale grey, propped up with swirling Anthropologie brackets fit my 425 square feet just perfectly.

My "bookshelf dream" is to have at least two full walls of bookshelves that require rolling ladders to reach their heights. Something like this...someday...

(Pierre Chareau's Bookcase from La Maison de Verre by Dominique Vellay)

Or this...

(Olson Kundig Architects, "The Brain," Photograph courtesy: Marco Prozzo)

(Bookshelves with Library Ladders, Diane von Furstenberg source unknown)