Here are a few cosy places that make me happy in winter… if I had them in my life, that is. Hope you have a good ‘Rutsch’ (slip) into the New Year, as the Germans say, and that it is a much better year for all of us!
We can never get enough of the great bookish indoors, can we? Here are some reading nooks where I could spend the entire month of December, with or without any Christmas decorations.
I think I am trying to convince myself with this title, as I would much rather be on holiday in Yorkshire still. But it certainly would feel a lot more fun if you had one of these home offices – not all of them are ideal and fanciful, but they seem to solve a problem.
For those who dare to dream big, or else convert their entire house into a home library (I mean: I would, as long as I had a bathroom and a kitchen and a bed somewhere as well). These all look rather comfortable, I’m sure you’ll agree. One thing, however, makes me sad. Many of these are from very expensive properties in the US and I cannot help wondering if many of these vast libraries are just for show, rather than that the owners truly read and treasure all of their books.
Thanks to my endless displays of home libraries in the Friday Fun series, one might suppose you have an impeccable home office/ study/ library by now. Ah, but do you have a hidden door? Next to a library ladder, it must be the single most coveted thing for a library addict. Here are some suggestions for when you next feel like a minor home improvement is required… Or when you want to hide and scare someone for Halloween!
Surely you haven’t got bored of me showing you magnificent home libraries and bookshelf possibilities? Here are a few recent favourites. I do hope I am not repeating myself.
I can downsize quite easily if I live all by myself – but I will need a special room just for my books, somewhere to read, write, and just admire all the imacculately arranged shelves. The ideal would be the Whatley family’s specially-commissioned library in Texas (first picture below), but some of the others might also do…
Under my stairs I have the cat’s litter tray, but if you set such prosaic realities aside, stairs do seem to offer an extra opportunity to store some books, especially if space is somewhat tight.
What’s the point of having a house without bookshelves filled with books? Here are some of my recent favourites (by the way, I have to keep on deleting old pictures, to make sure that I have enough space on my WordPress site, so you may find some posts are missing pictures, although I am trying to delete those rogue empty posts).
Whenever I search property websites for houses for sale in my dream locations, I am nearly invariably disappointed by the lack of books in most people’s houses. I’m not just thinking empty shelves, as is the case in one of the examples below (where the owner has clearly moved out before marketing her property), but no shelves at all, almost as if books were a dirty concept that should be kept hidden from view. Fortunately, I’ve managed to find some examples that prove that books really do form the best kind of backdrop in your home. And not just on Zoom calls.
findingtimetowrite 