The reading house

Reading is incredibly important in our house, to all of us (well, maybe not the dog, though he did like eating books when he was puppy). We estimate (it would take a bit too long to count, though I may do it one day) that we have about 2000 books. Rosemary has over 100 just herself, and more if you count all those teeny little board books that are in a box in the basement, waiting to released when her baby brother or sister arrives. We have read to her since she was born and she has (almost – there was a period of a few months where she only let her Granny read to her, not us, which was a bit sad) always loved reading.

A lot of our books are waiting for proper homes at the moment, as they were lined up under our bed (all the way round, so we could see them), but then the bed broke and we are back to sleeping on a mattress on the floor, with a few hundred books piled up on the edges of the room instead. There are also a couple of boxes of books in the basement that we should really take to a charity shop. But we find giving books away, or selling them, really very difficult.

We have been planning a set of shelves in the other alcove in the living room (the one to the right of the fireplace has a set already). But we have come to realise that we need more, so there are going to be three or four shelves going the full width of one of the walls, as well. There are many people who would balk at such an invasion of books into a living space. People who would think it looked cluttered (Chris’ parents, for example, find it difficult to understand our need to have so many books) and would worry about the dust. We, on the other hand, cannot wait and will find our living room even more of a comforting space where we want to sit, when it has more books decorating it.

Since needing to become more frugal, we have been making more use of the library. We went with Rosemary at least once a week, usually twice, already, but didn’t always borrow books ourselves. Recently, though I’m reading about one book week, helped along by the library’s Fast Track system (new bestsellers that you can only have out for a week) and their Richard and Judy selection (which is also on a one-week loan). I’m quite a slow reader these days, compared to Chris (he can read often read one or two books a night and at least three or four a week). If I didn’t have anything else to do, I could get through a book a day. That would be a luxury indeed.

Here are some of the books I’ve been reading over the last few weeks:

Rosemary usually gets nine or ten books out a week, sometimes swapping a few of them in the middle of the week. These days, we go for bedtime reading books, usually a largish format and paperback, with big bright pictures and fun and interesting stories. Sometimes, she’ll also pick out a counting or alphabet book or a lift-the-flap book. She gets very excited when she has new library books to read at bedtime, though she’ll usually insist on reading two or three of her own books, as well. By the end of the week, we end up with a towering pile of books by the side of her bed and I have to tidy them back into their bookshelves. Her two favourite books at the moment (both from the library) are:

I can’t keep up with what Chris is reading, as he gets through so much, but I know he got this out of the library on Monday:

Is yours a reading house? What are you reading at the moment? Do your children have favourite books? Do you use your library or just buy books? Where do you buy books from? (I could talk for hours about reading and buying books, but I’d better go and do some work instead, as Rosemary has just gone off to my mum’s.)

[You may have noticed that I have given up on the whole initial thing. R = Rosemary; C = Chris; I’m Tasha, which you probably know already!]