Whilst over at my parents during the Christmas and New Year break I got a big reminder about our family hobby... books!
I have so many books that I cannot fit them all in my current house and they are mostly languishing in a tall bookcase at my folks place. I have a few with me, but they seem to grow so easily that soon they will take over all over again.
Having studied design for 6 years, this has meant that I have Architecture, Design and Museum books which range from the Coffee Table books to the theory ones. I think I have more than my Uni Library used to have! Then there is the travel books and the fiction books which I try and pass on to Charity shops, but there are just some that you want to keep aren't there!
I really like old books and used to love rummaging around Spitalfields and Portabello market when I was in London to find unusual fiction or craft books. Now being out in the suburbs means I have lots of Charity shops to check out and also the web to get my new book fix! I have a book from the 1950's on dressmaking and bough my dad an engineering book which was a newer version of something he had at college - good skills for a great rummage in a second hand bookshop in Wantage.
I love rummaging in bookshops wherever I go, I always have a look in museum bookshops, second hand stores and charity shops wherever I go, from New York to Manchester, I have a book from pretty much every place I have visited! This probably lends itself to a collection, but I have more of them so I like to call this my hoard!
Over the holidays we discovered that my parents had books in every single room of their house (this was not a new thing, but something we just thought about!), apart from the bathrooms - but even then some people like to have a bathroom book don't they? I'm not sure about that one myself, but each to their own. My dad's books are more engineering and racing based and my mum's books are art based, then there are the books from my childhood (more about them another time) and the information ones, like the Joy of Knowledge which was the encyclopaedia to have in the 1980's - it got me through my GCSE's!
I love having books around me and often refer back to them for all sorts, but it's like a comfort blanket for me really, I know where I am with them and it's the joy of getting them home and then flicking through it to find something new. So on that note, I was given Material World by Perri Lewis for Christmas and so I am off to read some fascinating crafty bits!
Love it
H
