Would You Like To Take A Look At My Bookshelves?
To me, sharing my bookshelves with the internet is very intimate! This can give you a clue into how much I love and value books!
My love of reading started very early with Goosebumps & Babysitter's Club reading beneath the sheets into the wee hours of the morning.
In fact, that groggy, tired eye, empty flashlight batteries and even sore wrist (yes I know, I am extreme) is familiar to me even today!
I am a reader and a very curious human. As such, I was quite excited when @riverflows tagged me in a reveal your bookshelves challenge. I realize I'm very overdue to actually participate in the challenge, but I took the photos a couple weeks ago and am such getting down to making the post. So without further ado!
Would You Like To Take A Look At My Bookshelves?
Upon first waking, I usually have a pile of books to my right. Some are reference books as you can see my curiosity dabbles in many subjects!
Many good ones here, but make sure to check out Toko-Pa's book Belonging! An instant classic!
My love of books has much to do with my mother's influence. She and I would read together a lot when I was a girl. It wasn't uncommon for her to be sitting up in the bed in the evenings with a bowl of potato chips, peanut m & ms and iced tea chewing the ice and reading books. I'd join her on her waterbed!!
But I think the love of reading probably didn't start there, it started with her mother!
I have a vivid memory when I was a kid of one time going into my grandmother's room and seeing through the shadows and dim light, stacks and stacks of books on the floor! I'd never seen a room like that before...
I think since then (and since seeing my grandmother's bookshelves), I always wanted a house with bookshelves lining many of the walls! I don't have a formal house yet, but I do have quite a few smaller buildings all with their own book shelves. I'll walk you through all of the repositories for books around Mountain Jewel.
Cabin
The Cabin houses, I must say, some of my favorite books. This is the "Winter Selection" of books I was either actively studying (like my herbals) or that we on the To-Read list. I just finished Racing Alone by Nader Khalili, a visionary architect who created the idea of superadobe construction & actually fired old adobe style homes like huge pieces of pottery! You'll also see Beryl Markham's West With The Night... " She is the first person to fly the Atlantic east to west in a solo non-stop flight (a westbound flight requires more endurance, fuel, and time than the eastward journey, because the craft must travel against the prevailing Atlantic winds)."
Of her Hemingway said...
"she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers ... it really is a bloody wonderful book
Some real classics here for me. Like Peter Bane's Permaculture Handbook. Peter was one of my first Permaculture teachers. In fact, he taught me what permaculture was one muggy summer's fortnight in the hills of Southern Indiana...
Also, books by Starhawk, Pema Chodron, and Last Standing Woman by Winona LaDuke are must-haves!
Solar Shed
Next we take a journey out from the woods to the Solar Shed....
The Solar Shed of course has shelves tucked with books. I had to take many of my books out of storage finally! After many years of travel and being cooped up in boxes here and there, they're happy to see the light of day.
Classic regional reference books.
And many of the books you see here are actually my grandmother's. After she died, my family sorted through all of her things and my parents had her huge old bookcase in their house. Well my parents recently moved and I got many of the books! My grandmother was an avid reader and I have always admired and adored her taste in books. She was a woman ahead of her time!!
Composting Toilet
Yes, even our composting toilet has a bookshelf-- but of course! We need appropriate reading material in there as well. @Riverflows, you'll notice the cherished Pharmako series!!
For anyone who isn't familiar with these... Dale Pendell has gifted the world with an offering part scientific study// poetry of his explorations and research with plants... Shamanic ethnobotany would be a good phrase here!
Yurt
Lastly, we enter the yurt! Where we have a bookshelf full of books.
From mushroom ID to earth care, fiction and magic, Etymological dictionary to Poetry... This bookshelf is eclectic; just the way I like it!!
There you have it. The books at Mountain Jewel!!
Oh my goddess!!! What an extraordinary collection!!! I want to come up and curl in a corner with a pile of your books and a chai! Speaking of ethnobotany, have you read Wade Davis's One River?
There are so many books here I would like to read, particularly the spiritual plant books.
How beautiful that you inherited your grandmother's book fetish!! I do think a love of books passes down the generations. I just was given a stack at Mum and Dads but I'm a bit over fiction at the moment. I just ordered 'The Art Of Frugal Hedonism' by an Australian woman I heard on the radio the other day and am waiting patiently by the post. Plus a Pema Chadron.
Thanks soooo much for finally sharing your books with me !! I think I have just spent half an hour reading all the titles in utter desire and longing!!! We must be synced as I am halfway through the forgiveyourself post.. which was a hard write!! Might be a few more days thinking about that one!!
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ah hah! i love your words and enthusiasm!! big smiles over here!! <3!
funny you ask re: wade davis-- ini just read that book this winter and raved about it, although i have yet to read it!
yes the spiritual plant books are so so good. you've heard of stephen buhner? his book on fasting, his herbal antibiotics/antivirals series, plant spirits and so much more are absolute and total gifts to humanity!!
the art of frugal hedonism! sounds great- i'm going to look it up right now!! i like the idea that book fetishes are inherited. i've loved the smell of "old books" since i was young!
haha yeah it took me a while to get to this post for some reason,,, but! the inspiration struck this morning and i went with it! seriously took those photos way back when the contest was still live ;) no pressure or worries about the forgiveyourself post! totally whenever/if you feel it!! :D definitely synced <3
I'm just up to the formatting stage and being shy about sharing but in the next day or so expect my heart to be revealed!
That's weird about Wade Davis.. It's a fairly old book!! I will look into Buhner. I love this sharing of books and am trying to devise a cool theme/hashtag to keep it up as there are so many things we can learn about folk from their books!
yes i love that too!!! hmm theme hashtag! i think the show me your bookshelf is a cool one :D looking forward to your post. i am so so deeply excited for whatever twill be! <3 <3 <3
I was thinking of a three book stack challenge - the bookshelf one has been done sorta, and takes a long time to do, but most of us libre lovers have 3 books on the go at any one time. So it would be interesting to talk about them and share. What do you think?
I LOVED this post! Someone else with zillions of books! One time I estimated I had about 5000 books in this house! A LOT of them were for homeschooling and now live in the attic.
My office has classics only. The hall bookcase has non-fiction: plants, health, how to do, herbals, cat, and misc. There's 1.5 bookcases with National Geographics going back to 1916. Two stairwell bookcases of thrillers/mysteries.
One bedroom is all horse books, fiction and non-fiction. One bedroom has 3 bookcases and the top of the bureau of all kinds of books, 2 shelves of James Michener.
And this is the living room big bookcase. There's a smaller one on the other side of the room.
I've written a post, will put it up tomorrow, about my bookcases and books.
I absolutely love it!! Thanks for sharing!!! So nice to meet another kindred bibliophile!!!
Can't wait to read about them @goldenoakfarm !
Sounds great! Looking forward to your post @goldenoakfarm
So beautiful! Glad to see they have all found such a good home! Your grandmother would be proud, I know I am! From one book lover to another ox
xxx thanks for sharing your love of books/reading with me! it's one of those things that just passes on xoxoxo
Just rearranged my books! Always writing about my books so it makes a lovely change to see somebody else's bookcases. A marvellous eclectic collection. Love how they are integrated into every nook and cranny, the way books love to be.
:)
i love this..i think so too! thanks for stopping by.
@happysmileyman @wizardave Hows this for a collection!!!
I love your books and the sacred spaces they are all held in. I think you would loose me at the yurt and a few weeks later find me still happily digesting knowlege @mountainjewel 😊
:D haha perfect! that's how i feel sometimes, too <3
Wow. Very nice collection @mountainjewel!
thanks @wizardave! for the inspiration and kind words :)
Is my book in there? I think yes!? I love it by the way, this post!!!!!
yes! many of your chapbooks!! especially in the reading section of the compost toilet ;) xxxx
I saw you had the Nearing book about when Scott died. I have their maple book and The Good Life.
yes! such good ones! the making of a radical is such a powerful book. they're both such inspiring figures. i lived at their place for a summer in maine and greeted guests/managed the gardens. was so inspired by their example.
Wow! How cool is that! I've always been so impressed by all the work they did building the various homesteads.
Here's my post:
https://steemit.com/books/@goldenoakfarm/would-you-like-to-take-a-look-at-my-bookshelves-prompted-by-mountain-jewel
I love seeing other people’s books. I have 4 loaded bookshelves and piles in all the places I often sit 🤭 I’m currently reading about 5 books simultaneously.... yeah that’s not going so well!
I love so much of this it's hard to know where to start, but well, the beginning is a good spot! The babysitter's club! It started when i was in elementary school, so i'm a tad older than you, but i was obsessed!
You are so right that you can tell a lot about someone from their bookshelves. It's the first thing i look to when the owner leaves the room. I can see you care about the planet, spirituality, food, and a good story. Also i can tell we have much to chat about, starting with babvysitters club and the secret garden and moving on to poetry, permaculture, tom robbins, feminism, and spirituality in its many forms. So many common books. I could hardly breathe through the Hemmingway recommendation. He is a big hero for me, so those are big words. Thats obviously now on my list. Thanks for sharing and connecting us more deeply.