To Be Read

Since we moved into our house six months ago, I’ve been finding books tucked into random boxes, hidden under clothes and in bits and pieces across the house as books that were given to me or purchased by me made new homes as soon as they sailed through our front door. And during these last six months, our core collection of books were in boxes in our living room, patiently waiting for a new home while their free-wheeling cousins lived wherever they found a place somewhere in Throbbing Manor. We did not bring any furniture with us when we moved across the state, but several months ago it began getting to the point where we needed to get bookcases and fast as I was tired of shifting large piles of books around the house to make room for more books!
(It also doesn’t help that I’m a huge proponent of our local library and have, on average, 10-15 items checked out that I rotate through on a weekly basis.)
I was overly exicted this week as it was a big week for us delivery wise as pillows we ordered in January (handcrafted with the tears of third-world children) and our bookcases and other bits were all finally delivered after months of waiting. I spent most of last night organizing our bookshelves and saying “Mother fucker!” quite a bit. The M-Fing is due to the fact that after a huge sort and weed before we moved to Grand Rapids (in which I donated dozens of boxes of books to friends and local library system in Royal Oak), there were boxes of more tomes in our storage locker that I only cursory went through and sorted before repacking them before the move. Much of those books, including books I have purchased since late fall, were books I have yet to read.
My TBR pile now extends across most of the top shelf (circled in orange), stands about 3′ high and there are several double stacks of books. TheHusband estimated there were close to 150+ titles there I had to plow through and at my current rate, would take me about 3 years to get through. Now, to be fair, there are a lot of duplicates (and triplicates and even a few quadlicates…) and materials that I would probably never read or even want to keep for reference, so that does help. But oy! I’ll have to curtail my library adventures and stop buying books for awhile.
TheHusband’s stack (outlined in blue) is worse not because he has more books then I do (he doesn’t), but that he hasn’t read a book in a few years. He’s also banned the buying of books for himself on the hopes he can get through his stack and move everything over to a Kindle for future purchases. This is all well and good but at his current rate, we’ll be bluetoothing everything to our brain when he’s finished.
[A click on any of the images below will take you to Flickr for the larger sized versions.]

The gaping hole in the middle (where the arrow for James Bond & Jane Austen point to) is for my complete works of Ian Flemming (which I currently cannot find) and all of my Austen titles which are in my office. Below is the second book case we purchased as a comprise as I wanted two large bookcases and TheHusband wanted one large bookcase so we got one large and one small. The goal is as the books are read and then they are moved onto the small bookcase, but if my calculations are close, we’ll be needing another large bookcase within 6 months to a year.
The poster above the bookcase is of Byron that I got at the Keats-Shelley House in Rome in 2005. We finally got it framed when we moved. The lamp is from WorldMarket and the fan is from South Korea, given to me by my friend Steve! The bottles are from our basement and were left overs from the staging of the house when it was on the market. The photo groupings are some images of me from high school and college.
Our style is Fauvist color with Mid-Century lines with tackiness thrown in.

While I’m here, I might as well show you the rest of the images of our living room which as of yesterday, is probably the most complete room in the house. We still have a long way to go in terms of furniture and decoration for other rooms in the house, but at least this one looks pretty homey with stuff on it.
The rug, grey ottoman and magazine holder are from OverStock. The leather couch (which is a deep purple), the orange pillows are handmade from ties and both items are from Design Quest. The end tables, bookcases, round stand lamp and the patterned chair are from Stone’s Throw. The frame above the fireplace has an original 1940 Art Deco inspired post of Michigan that was given to Michigan kids in the 1940s. I got it from eBay and had it framed. The sconces, chandelier and the tile work on the fireplace is original to the house.