Books.

"Give a gift that keeps on giving.... give books." That was on a bookmark that I got from a bookstore a long, long time ago. The bookmark is worn now, with a little crease here and there, and it seems to be much thinner than it was when it was brand new, but I still use it, along with at least a dozen other bookmarks that have found their way here over the years.

My husband and I were talking about addictions not too long ago... how just about everyone on the planet has some kind of addiction, whether it be food or drink or cigarettes, music or travel, or any number of things. When my husband asked me what I thought I might be addicted to, my immediate response was Books!

I've been reading books since I learned how to read, and before then, both of my parents used to read to me, from a collection of children's books that I wish I still had now. My mother would read to me from a huge book of "Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes." It was a large thick book with a white cover, and there was a lithograph of Mother Goose on the front, and she was actually riding on a huge white goose as if it were a horse. Dad used to read me the Golden Books, and the Disney-type books, and (unlike my mother who would read a book like a school teacher), daddy would add different voices and accents to each character. And I remember one particular story that daddy made up, about a fox and a pig who would sneak into a butcher shop every night to eat up the meats. The fox would eat just enough for the night, but the pig would eat enough for a week and he got too fat to be sneaking into the little hole behind the butcher's store. Sometimes, the fox would have a French accent; other nights, the fox would be Italian. And the pig-- the fatter he got, the deeper his voice.

In our old house in Clear Lake, we had three huge built-in wall-to-wall bookcases... two in the living room and one in the TV room. Those bookcases were filled with books, both mine and my husband's. In this hundred-year-old home, there are no wall-to-wall bookcase units, so I've had to be creative with my book collection. Before we moved here, I went through each of my books, only packing my favorites, plus the ones that I knew I would re-read... so that thinned down the number of books a bit.

But still.... no built-in bookcases, and we just never found bookcase units that looked antique-y enough for this house. (We found a couple, but they were way off the charts in price-- antique dealers who love their displays too much tend to over-price their items, and we've learned to walk away.)

Out of necessity, comes creativity. I separated all my books into categories when I got to unpacking my books last year when we moved here. All my vintage classics are between bookends on a long triple-dresser in the dressing room. I have already re-read "84, Charing Cross Road," "A Night to Remember," and "The Age of Innocence" since those books were unpacked. My cat books are on the top shelf of my writing desk; my collection of Christmas books are on the bottom shelf of a sofa table.

All of my modern-day hardcover fiction is on a bookcase in my sitting room; the softcover modern-day fiction is on a smaller bookcase in the dressing room. The large bookcase came from our neighbor V's house, who was trying to de-clutter one of her upstairs rooms before we moved. The smaller bookcase is vintage mahogany, from our friend J, who was downsizing from a house to an apartment around the time we were moving.

My collection of non-fiction is in the breakfast room, on the open shelves of a hutch that was once in my husband's mother's home on Long Island. I've re-read five of the books from those shelves since they've been unpacked, and my next one to read again will be "The Diary of Anne Frank," a volume that we bought in Amsterdam, in the actual house where Anne's family was hidden during the war. I read it coming back on the plane, the story being all the more real because we had been in those very rooms that she wrote about.

I have books on the British monarchy and the Royal Family....... all of those are in the living room, along with the travel books... tucked away on the bottom shelves of end-tables and on the bottom shelf of the music box table. If my collection of books on the Royals gets much bigger, they will find themselves on the mantel over the fireplace. The dining room serving table holds my collection of decorating books... table-settings and centerpieces and fine china and vintage linens... beautiful books to page through on a rainy day. And my full set of beautiful leather-bound books by Charles Dickens is in the upstairs hallway, protected in a glass-fronted curio.

My country kitchen has shelves built into the island for my cookbooks, and the vintage china cupboard (original to this house) holds my collection of Mary Engelbreit books, all of which can make you smile as soon as you look at the front covers. A very small ladder-type bookcase in the kitchen holds all of my tea books, and two books on raising chickens and one book identifying the local wildflowers. My Texas gardening book is always ready to look into, as is an etiquette book published in 1907, the year this house was built.

A cost-conscious book splurge this year was a complete set of vintage Nancy Drew hardcovers, found on eBay for a ridiculous low price because the seller only posted one picture of the 56-volume set. (I'd been looking for a complete set off and on for a couple of years now.) I think buyers were afraid to bid on this low-priced set, and I was too until I eMailed the seller with some questions. I've already read the first one in the series, and I intend to read them all. I used to read Nancy Drew years and years and years ago, late into the night, under the covers with a flashlight. "Are you still up in there?" Shut off the flashlight, quick. "No, I'm not." Put the flashlight back on... turn pages quietly.... prop up a pillow so the light doesn't shine through underneath the door. Remember to confess on Saturday: "Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I lied to my mother every time she asked me if I was still up. I was reading and I didn't want to stop." Now I can read them all again without a flashlight. The vintage Nancys are in the bookcase/desk right here where my laptop is. I plan to gift the set to my cousin's little girl when she gets older...... she is already a book-lover, and she's barely six years old.

I am still finding books.... every week at the thrift shop..... beautiful non-fiction volumes about Texas.... historical fiction.... vintage books from the 1940s and 1950s, and some of the new best-sellers that I wouldn't even pay half-price for at the bookshops. We do have a library in town, but I save that for books I don't want to have on my own shelves. The thrift-shop books are all under a dollar or two, and the money goes to charity.

What to read... what to read..... I had to come up with a system so I could read the newly-found books while not neglecting to read the books I've vowed to re-read. Into a little box, I put slips of paper with the titles of the just-bought books written on each. Added to that are slips that say re-read a classic, re-read vintage fiction, re-read new fiction, re-read non-fiction, re-read Dickens, and the newest slip that I've added says "Nancy Drew." What I've been doing is just sticking my hand in that box and pulling out one slip of paper... whatever is written on the slip is what I choose to read. It's been a good method, because newer books were getting buried under a pile of books that have been there for months--- I keep a pile of "books to be read" in a corner of my sitting room.... those are just-found books that will either make it to one of my shelves, or they'll go into the guest cottage, for our friends to read and to take home with them when they visit.

This entry has gone from "just a few words about books" to "more than anyone besides me would care to know about my books." And why is that? Because.... I am addicted to books, plain and simple. And it saddens me to hear about things like the Kindle...... my husband had asked me if I wanted one of those things when it came out. Are you kidding me? That's not a book! It's a piece of electronics! Where on earth would I shelve it?