It is Friday. I love a good Friday! I love the expectations of a wonderful weekend and most of the time I love having NOTHING planned for my upcoming weekends. I adore to be busy and I find that 9 times out of 10 my life is running at warp speed but on my weekends that I am actually home, I love the feeling of just “being.” One thing I do have planned for the weekend is hitting up some of my favorite bookstores. I love going to bookstores. There is nothing I don’t like about it. I love the smell of the books and the harmony of the books and the people working together to create something. A book is magic. I grew up with books everywhere. My Grandfather was a chemistry professor and my Grandmother an  English teacher. They were always reading. Every room in their Plantation style home was loaded with books. My Grandmother’s furniture was from the Victorian Era…let me explain. All her furniture had feet. You know, the wooden legs that was on EVERYTHING from that time period.

Like this…see the feet?

The chairs, the sofas…..all of it had claws of some sort. This furniture never did anything for me, but clearly at some point it was the bee’s knees! I can tell you that none of it was built for comfort. Furniture with feet=not comfortable. However, grab a really good book, turn on the lamp above that Victorian chair and that book could take away all the discomfort of that chair. I learned the value of Charlotte’s Web while sitting on that old Victorian furniture. I learned that a  National Geographic could take me far away from that furniture all together. I love that my parents read all time time and encouraged me to as well. When I was a little kid the Bookmobile (a Library on wheels, seriously!) would come once a month to our area. I would always leave my Mom a huge list of what to get me to read. It was such a highlight growing up. 

My den..books, books and more books

Now days it seems books are fading. I find this happening a lot lately. When you’re talking to someone about reading it goes kind of like this “so what was the last book you read?”   “hmm, I think The Scarlet Letter in high school” “Wow, you are like what… 40 years old now…interesting.” I don’t even know where to go from there.  I took a vacation to the Bahamas several years back and for three days I laid on the beach and read three books. It was the most glorious vacation I could ever take. No cell phones, no laptops, no constant conversation, just me and a book and it was AMAZING!

My vacation last year..Arizona..and again…a book.

I guess looking back on it, reading has always been such a constant in my life. It is probably not a big shocker that I ended up in the Publishing industry. The main decoration in my house………. books! I couldn’t live without them, I fear I may stop breathing if I didn’t have books around me. They are my comfort zone, my little safety net, my magic behind my day to day. Books breathe a life in to you that you didn’t know existed. 

Happy Friday!

Leigh W.