Pretty Books

I love books. I always have. When I was little I used to sleep on top of all my books because I just loved having them around me (shh, don't tell anyone, but I still do this--okay not ALL my books, but at least two--when the boy is not sleeping over). I just love the way they smell and feel and how the act of reading can take you to such amazing places. I love learning new things and seeing from new perspectives and contemplating the world around me and the shared human experience as well as things I will never experience. I love language and how it sounds streaming through my mind, I love the way good authors skillfully play with words and adapt them to their own voice. I love getting lost in a story so that I feel as though I'm in it. I love when a book changes you. For all these reasons, and MANY more, I adore books. But, being the visual person that I am, I also love them for the way they look. And I found this awesome flickr group that feels the same way:







Listening to O+S.

And for Poetry Month:
The Land of Story-books
by Robert Louis Stevenson


At evening when the lamp is lit,
Around the fire my parents sit;
They sit at home and talk and sing,
And do not play at anything.

Now, with my little gun, I crawl
All in the dark along the wall,
And follow round the forest track
Away behind the sofa back.

There, in the night, where none can spy,
All in my hunter's camp I lie,
And play at books that I have read
Till it is time to go to bed.

These are the hills, these are the woods,
These are my starry solitudes;
And there the river by whose brink
The roaring lions come to drink.

I see the others far away
As if in firelit camp they lay,
And I, like to an Indian scout,
Around their party prowled about.

So, when my nurse comes in for me,
Home I return across the sea,
And go to bed with backward looks
At my dear land of Story-books.