Books

The one constant in my life has been the benefit of living with books.  My mother is a reader. As a young homemaker, part of creating hearth and home entailed joining the Book of the Month Club and subscribing to Parents Magazine Press Books For Children when I was big enough to start flipping pages on my own.

Going to my friends' homes and seeing no books except for a Bible or schoolbooks was always disconcerting. Sometimes their homes were beautiful, but where were the shelves?  Our household decor sat somewhere on the American aesthetic scale  between Malcolm In The Middle's surname-free clan's clutter and the The Middle's Heck family's shabby-familiar abode.  (I was a girl version of Brick Heck, right down to the bibliophilia and the echolalia.  In case you're wondering, yes, most children do outgrow it. )

A messy house with art supplies, anything Dad and I saw and wanted on Mr. Wizard, and books may not have netted us any requests for a photo-shoot from House Beautiful, but it always told me this was a place where people lived.  I still think that way.  The books, or lack thereof, speak volumes to me about the occupants of a home.

Here's a rundown of what you'll find on the pages linked to this one:

Links For Bookish Folk - If I need to explain this to you...

Reviews - Here is where you'll find a table of contents of my book reviews.