Happy Places : The book corner in my living room
Ever since I was little I wanted to have an own library. I had 4 library cards for every library within 20 km and I went every Wednesday to my favourite library to read and borrow books. After reading a book I never wanted to give it back (that is why I had to pay a fine for every single book). I wanted to keep it to treasure the story and to reread it when I wanted to. In the end I gave them all back (of course I did… ) and my family started giving me gift vouchers from the local book shop for Christmas and my birthdays. Sometimes I took me a year or longer to use my voucher (and a lot of discussion as the voucher were only valid for one year). I looked at the books and I couldn’t decide which of the million books to buy with my one single voucher. Maybe there are still some vouchers back from 1992 in German D-Mark in my drawer, because I never threw them away. Some years later I discovered the magic of second hand book stores. No matter to which city I was going and no matter how big my baggage was I needed to buy one of these old used books that told me a lot more than only the story that was written in it. I loved them even more when they had some hand written notes inside. Unfortunately I didn’t have that much space in my student house and in my small room in Paris and Ghent (where I lived for a while) to put them all on shelves and to admire them. Every time somebody came to visit he had to take books home. Now I am a big fan of the second hand book stand on my local market and of course amazon second hand book store and my collection is growing and growing. I have books in all languages I can read and speak (so that makes four), art books, literature, business books and just trivial romances. When Conrad and me moved together 4 years ago we started with an easy IKEA bookshelf (yes a billy) and with the time we developed this shelve to become a small library corner in our living room. This is one of my favourite places on earth … especially when it is dark and rainy outside. A coffee and a blanket and I just get carried away with my books. You can see below an instagram pic of this corner and the old davenport next to the shelves is filled with books as well… My own little library where I can keep the books as long as I want to.