yes. doug can read.
This year for Christmas I asked Amy for some books, and she said, no, no way, not until you do something with all those books in your bedroom. Which: quite fair, really. She bought me a whole basket full of books for my birthday, and there's no room on my bookshelves, so they have to live with the other vagrant books on my floor, where they spend each day being stacked and hoping that one of the shelf books will get lost or left on the side of the bathtub long enough to create an open home.
I invited Amy to help me decide what to do with my room to create more shelf space, which is a right-up-her-alley project because of the genes she inherited from her carpentry-minded dad, and the hundreds of hours of shows she's watched on TLC, and her monthly study of the Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware catalogs. She came into my room with a tape measure and walked around and said a bunch of numbers, and also "wasted space" a lot. She decided on four tall bookshelves along two different walls, and one long, shorter bookshelf on the third wall. I said, why not have tall bookshelves on all the walls, and she rolled her eyes and said it would be like sleeping in a library. "Sleeping in a library?" I said. "Sexy!"
I could tell by her face she was ashamed I wasn't ashamed that I think libraries are titillating, but being smart is a turn on, and it's not like I said I have this recurring fantasy where I make sweet, bookish love on the floor of The Library of Congress, after hours, and the light from the candles that illuminate my lover's face also illuminate the thirty million regular books and fifty-eight million manuscripts and million newspapers and six-thousand comic books that would stretch more than five-hundred miles if the shelves were lined end-to-end. And instead of the pedestrian, you're beautiful in this light or whatever, it would be, Thomas Jefferson sold his personal collection of books to this very library in 1815, and it has more shelf space than any library in the world, so kiss me, kiss me, and let's bask in the radiance of hundreds and hundreds of years of perfect, perfect literature. Or something. I haven't given it much thought.
So Amy picked out some bookshelves for me, and advised me on the best kind of nightstand and bed to purchase, and it was all very nice, and I was quite thankful, as spatial tasks and, well, matching aren't really my forte, but then she suggested I move my bed to the wall nearest the door and I flipped out. It was a bad, bad idea, I told her. She said it would create more space, and I said if my bed was against that wall I couldn't see when a person came into my room. She wondered why it mattered, really, and I said because on that side of the room a vampire could get into my bedroom and I would never even see it coming.
Amy smiled sweetly, because fear is fear, and she looked over at the stack of itinerant books on the floor beside my bed. There's a book with 1950s illustrations on how to be a good housewife, a set of children's text books from Great Britain. There's poetry and graphic novels and classifications of prose. But there are no books on destroying vampires or conquering irrational fears. If I had the Library of Congress to myself for the night, though, you can bet your bottom dollar that I'd find books on both of those things. Both those things and everything else.
I wonder if I could move in to The Library of Congress, or if they have some extra shelves I can borrow. I wonder who I should speak with to try to make that happen. It is, after all, an election year.
Comments
You should talk to Kat!. She's kind of a big deal.
Also, I think I read a book when I was little about kids who got stuck in a library overnight and I thought they were the luckiest kids in all the land.
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I always thought the Boxcar kids were really lucky. Shows how skewed my sense of luck is. (Oh, and Kat is the biggest deal I've ever known.)
Posted by: Jennie! | December 31, 2007 10:50 AM
Or something. I haven't given it much thought.
hee.
you know what? you can't actually see any of the books in the library of congress. if you want to peruse a tome you have to write the call numbers on a little slip of paper and hand it to the librarian, then wait patiently at your table for about 45 minutes while someone goes to fetch it.
plus, there are like three or four buildings to the library of congress, and you never ever go to the right one when you're looking for something.
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Yeah, I've read about the waiting and the waiting. But that's only if you're following the rules. In my fantasy, I have the library (mostly) to myself. And also I can fly.
Posted by: kat! | December 31, 2007 10:54 AM
Aren't there tunnels between the buildings, though? Did I make that up? I might have, I just really like tunnels.
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I think there are tunnels. I think that because I saw it in National Treasure 2. (Wait until Nicholas Cage gets his hands on our Pope Stone script. Whooo boy.)
Posted by: Jennie! | December 31, 2007 10:57 AM
Maybe the Pope Stone is in the tunnels! We should check there before we finish the script.
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We should also check Buckingham Palace. And some other places in London. And Scotland.
Posted by: Jennie! | December 31, 2007 11:03 AM
You have time to read these days? That's not what I heard.....
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Well, not at this moment, no. But once I conquer the next four levels of Guitar Hero, which, judging by my past performance, should take about three days, then yes, yes I will have time to read. (I love you.)
Posted by: Melissa (Courtney's Mom) | December 31, 2007 11:04 AM
You have such a way with imbuing the appreciation of literature with the eroticism it deserves. Paragraph 3 gave me a most pleasurable laugh.
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That's a fine compliment, indeed! Happy New Year, Jill. :)
Posted by: Jill | December 31, 2007 11:22 AM
I've got these four IKEA bags also full of books with no homes. Could you find space for them?
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If they're not books about Templar Prophecies, then yes, of course. How's that Google Reader?
Posted by: Jenn The Sister | December 31, 2007 11:39 AM
I'm thinking of taking it (google reader) to the library of congress.
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You going to the Library of Congress, too? (His Daddy's named Forest, too?)
Posted by: Jenn The Sister | December 31, 2007 11:54 AM
I want to move into the Library of Congress with you.
Oh, and great fantasy. May I steal it?
Posted by: Jenn (the not-sister) | December 31, 2007 01:49 PM
The Library of Congress is my favorite building in the whole US of A (and probably the world, but I haven't seen much of it, yet).
It's super-fun wandering around in the tunnels under the city. But also crazy confusing, between all the different buildings of the LoC, and the Smithsonians, and the Congressional office buildings, and all the other lovely fun places in DC.
Do you have your Library of Congress library card? I do. :)
Posted by: Alisa | December 31, 2007 03:56 PM
Paleontology section, fifth floor, stack 437..
Posted by: Gravesland (Courtney's Uncle) | December 31, 2007 03:57 PM
I am in dire, dire need for some bookshelves. What were the ones she picked out for you? I MUST HAVE THEM. If I trip over one more book, I'm going flip out and then possibly bust an ankle or something.
Posted by: Heather B. | December 31, 2007 04:28 PM
I should have paid more attention to my mom and eaten my carrots so I could SEE the titles on those lovely stacks of books in the picture! Drat. Heath, I am so with you about the library thing in every respect that it's scary. I about nodded my head right off its neck. I'm doing my best to make what is currently the *yawn* living room into a full blown library. Ahhh... bliss.
Hey! Happy New Year! Happy shelving, too. midnight kiss
Posted by: Kelly | December 31, 2007 07:19 PM
Vampires would never get past Margaret anyway, so I think you should do what Amy suggests and put your bed wherever is best for the books. The books, they should always win any contest. But that's just me, and I never slept in a library or congress, so really, what do I know?
Happy 2008!
Posted by: shari | December 31, 2007 11:11 PM
You have to give Vampires an invitation before they can come in.
You should be safe.
Posted by: Mad William | January 1, 2008 02:25 AM
My room is 10'x14', and in this room I have a bed (with a direct siteline to the door, OF COURSE!!), three large bookcases, a desk with bookshelves on each end, and two small bookcases that fit under the windows. And there are still about 100 books who are homeless, who live on my floor, the desk, the TV cart, & my closet. My fantasy room was always the library in Disney's Beauty & the Beast... but I suppose the LoC would do.
Posted by: NTE | January 6, 2008 07:02 PM