(no subject)
I've been thinking about bookshelves.
Like in one of those private libraries in an old house where the stacks extend up toward a high ceiling, and the books are carried by darkly polished wood shelves, trimmed in baroque carvings and details.
In the room I imagine red or brown stuffed chairs and ottomans scattered about, all of them as worn and comfortable as the best reading chairs are, fit for curling up into like a little nest, with a well-thumbed book in hand and a small table close by to hold a reading lamp and a cup of tea. There is a large standing globe, and a big desk with ink pens and fountain pens and quill pens, and paper and pencils, and an old metal typewriter with a half-written page curled around it's roller, lit by two green-shaded desk lamps.
There is a lecturn in one corner, upon which an open book would sit---a volume of the Oxford English Dictionary most likely---and a large open fireplace where the embers of a fire would have burned down to red coals, and a chessboard with intricately carved chess pieces laid out in mid-game.
The room itself wouldn't be square or rectangular, but vaguely octogonal, and in its center would be a table, large enough to accomodate the maps of far away places as they are unrolled to be pored over and consulted with magnifying lenses. French doors and a series of tall windows line one end of the room, and they look out onto a walled garden where herbs and trees and diluted sunlight mingle throughout the year.
Sculptures are scattered around the room, figures of gods and goddesses and artists, and pictures, and tall candles, and bits of wood found along shorelines, and pieces of crystal, and a couple of worn swords hanging from hooks on the wall.
And beyond all these things there would be the smell of books, the smell of hundreds and hundreds of books, and of herbs and candle wax and well-polished wood.
This seems to be the sort of place where books ought to live.