Love of Books

I love books...

[Photo By:ginnerobot]

 I love reading them, looking at them, but most of all I love sharing them with friends. I could spend hours in a library or a book shop. My favorite Disney movie is Beauty and the Beast simply for the scene in the book shop with the rolling ladders and the part where Beast shows Belle the library in the castle. As a kid, I always had at least 3 books I was reading at a time and would check out dozens of books every summer. Now as a college student, I have a job in the research department of the library and I get to hang out with books all the time.

When I'm not busy at work I will often go through the shelves and pull books out that look interesting. Through this I've discovered so many wonderful books that often sit on the shelves forgotten. In fact I found one the other day that had never been opened! It's binding had never been broken even though its pages were yellowing. Sometimes I find one that I know a friend would love but would never find on their own. I then take it upon myself to be the book matchmaker and introduce them to one another. It makes me so happy to see them sit down with it and flip through it, with their homework neglected beside them.

The old books are my favorite. They are not computer printed cardboard like all the new ones. Instead they have cloth covers with gold ink letter imprinted on them. They are the ones with the most character and have such beautiful covers even though their edges are fraying and the binding makes a crackling sound as you open it because the hardened glue is coming loose. When you look in the back cover there is the old catalog card in the back that says all the due dates for check out. Some of them haven't been checked out in years and their most recent stamp says "Due Jan 23, 1974".

Books hold history beyond their content. The Librarian's stamps, the cover, the penciled notes in the margins,  the old bookmarks that were left in by mistake, even the crumbs in the binding from someone's late night study snack from 40 years ago, all tell a story. This is why I love books, especially library books. Sometimes I get so distracted thinking about where the book has been and who else has read it that I never actually get around to reading it...oh how wonderful life is with books...

Cheers!

After re-reading this I've realized that I need to own a bookshop. I don't think that I could be a librarian because then I would be stuck inside all the time, but a bookshop I could do. At the very least I need to have a space for a library in my house.

Rain today.

I really need to stop drinking Earl Gray Tea Lattes past 8 o'clock at night... this is the second night in a row that I have an haven't been able to fall asleep.

Also, thanks to my roommate, I always think of red shoes when I drink Earl Gray tea. {She decorated our Earl Gray tea tin with a collage with red shoes. When I asked her why she said "because red shoes are my favorite and so is earl gray!" So now Earl Gray tea= red shoes in my brain. That and the color purple because the tag is always purple.}

Here's to red shoes, the color purple, and Earl Gray tea...

Cheers!

Te quiero mi amor...

Love...

[Photo found: here]

 Be mine.

Valentine.

-xoxo-

Houses of red, yellow, green, and blue...

[One day I will return.]

Where the land becomes the coast, the place where the two great forces of nature meet; mountain and sea. There, the waves sing a song that is mournful and true. There the rocks hide stories of years past that no one ever speaks.  Shadowed houses of red, yellow, green, and blue rise out of the cliffs and between them stone roads twist and turn. Up, up, up. At dawn, the bell in the watch tower chimes, telling all to wake. The gulls join in with their screeching cry. 

Slowly an old man hobbles past the fountain, as he does every morning, to the Panaderia for his tea and pastry. He used to order coffee, but to please his wife he drinks tea now. She worries for his nerves. Some days, when she goes to the city to visit her sister, he orders coffee because she won't smell it on his breath. She pretends to not know.

The delivery boy rides his bike and waves as he passes the old man at his table in the sun. He always takes the long way on his deliveries because he says he is training for le Tour de France. He's been training for four years. Jorge, the delivery manager is always says he is going to fire the boy if he is late one more time, but everyone knows he never will because he has no other delivery boys and if he did he would have to make the deliveries himself. 

The fish monger in the market argues with Palo, the head chef at El Patio, about the price of fish as the fishermen unload the morning's catch. The flopping mackerel shimmer in the new sunlight as they are pulled from the nets. 

The square begins to buzz as the women come to purchase food to fill their pantries for the week. Children laugh while playing tag between the stalls as they hurry to school. Their shirts already dirty and their hair flying in every direction.

The bustle of life being lived begins again as the sun warms the stones and the dawn becomes the day...

Good Cup

[Dirty Chai. Creamy Chai Latte + Double Shot= Sweet Deliciousness with a little Spicy Flare]

 

....

Being here, the sights, the sounds, the smell,

Drives me to think, to write, to be.

....

Thanks Good Cup!

While running today

I had a brilliant idea about cookbooks: they should make a list of all the ingredients you will need for all the recipes in the book.

Like fennel...

[Such a strange vegetable...]

I don't know anyone (well maybe my foodie friends) who regularly stocks fennel in their fridge. I would probably only buy fennel to make one thing and then have to eat it for the next 2 weeks to make sure that it doesn't go bad...

Solution?

There can be with a short list of all of the strange ones that you only sometimes need (like fennel).  That way if it just so happens that fennel is on sale and you buy some then you can look at the list of strange ingredients you only sometimes need and know that there is something you can make with it!

Brilliant I say!

Another idea is to have a seasonal cookbook where there is 1 recipe a day for every day of the year (yes 365 recipes) and at the beginning of every "seasonal" section it can list what you can expect to find at your local produce store or farmers market that will be in the recipes for those months.

Cheers to great ideas while running!