I was going to ask my father to help me move my adopted recliner chair into my bedroom which I saved from hard rubbish collection, but he's got a sore knee as well as a sore back. All that doesn't help the fact that there's a tiny little gate between my house and driveway that I think was dismantled when we moved into this house to get our furniture inside. In terms of having a soft and comfy chair to sit back into and get some reading down, things don't look so prosperous on that avenue.
My diary for 2012 was made from a recycled Little Golden Book- I bought Bambi in the end deciding against 'Barbie and the Scavenger Hunt'. I've never had a cool looking diary and while I often forget to write in it and refer to it religiously like a bible I still enjoyed taking it with me to my university information session and jotting down notes at the back. There's a whole heap of incomprehensive jargon as well as subject codes at the back and some notes about them from yesterday.
While there are several bookcases in my house, none of them look as cool as this wall bookcase spelling out the word 'read'. I have seen invisible hanging books attached to walls but nothing that really measures up to this frame and all the books contained within it. The bookcases at my parent's house are full of model engineering books belonging to my father and are crammed full of them. There's even books lying horizontally on the vertically stacked ones. I think the shelves would be sinking and dipping by now, if they weren't help up by more books crammed in the shelf underneath them.
I love the small bookcase in my room- while the middle shelf is occupied by my basketball trophies to make room on my desk, the top shelf is full of magazines such as Vogue, Frankie and Russh and the Kodak Encyclopedia of photography. I feel really cut about Kodak filing for bankruptcy, I remember my father showing me his Kodak Brownie, a gift from one of his sister's and his name written on a band aid in the handwriting of my grandmother who's been long dead. There's charm and nostalgia for me and the brand and I do hope to stock up on film as little mementos of a great age that has come to a halt thanks to the digital age.
I myself own the complete illustrated works of Lewis Carrol, although I'm willing to bet that my copy was a lot cheaper than this. For one thing my copy isn't a hard cover copy and has a pink cover with illustrations that seem to be in water colour and I bought my copy from Aldi, a discount supermarket who were also selling complete works of Shakespeare and also other classic novels. In retrospect I really should have stocked up on classic literature at the time but I've barely made a dent into my book yet. At $14 AUD, it was a good bargain though and unexpected.
The great thing about borrowing books and magazines from the library is that they often have lots of copies of Vogue from before I got my subscription and that the time limit of a loan pushes me on to read the book before I have to return it. I find that when I own a copy of a book or magazine that I seldom do read it, except for the day of purchase when I can't wait to pour my eyes over its contents. I'd really love to find my way around all those magazines piled high- I've got my eye on a few copies of Lula on eBay as well as Oyster magazine and a runway collection look from Vogue Paris of 2011's runway shows. So much literature, so little motivation to read it sadly enough.
I'd love to curl up in a chair in my room and sit with a good book for hours on end but the book I'm reading at the moment is a little more difficult than I had reckoned. It's a novel by Terry Pratchett called 'Making Money' and is a Discworld novel. He's most famous for writing 'The Hogfather' which was made into a film and has written about thirty of forty novels about Discworld, a world parallel to our own. There's witches and wizards, gnomes and clay monsters called golems and the city of Ankh-Morpork is run by a tyrant. I thoroughly enjoy all his novels but this one isn't as easy to get into initially as the rest. There's a lot of quick scenes and not enough background information to understand the beginning with ease in my opinion.
I love the artwork quality of old books, the hand sewn pages and material covers and even leather bound books kept safe from the elements. The collection shown here of gold gilt books that look like they could fall apart in your hands is an amazing way to decorate. It suggests worldly experiences and knowledge as well as intelligence and intellect.
In the weeks leading up to my rescue of the old red recliner I had a real inclination and fetish for vintage looking furniture, especially nurse stools and armchairs. There's something very comforting about upholstery as well as tapestry and worn out leather and the way it's sort of been squashed to fit around a person. When getting stuck into a good book being comfortable is essential and while lying in bed is one of my usual favourite spots, I would like to keep the two activities, sleeping and reading separate. Supposedly it makes it harder to sleep at night and you should only use your bedroom to sleep and nothing else.
