I just found my dream house.
From Julia Cameron’s Floor Sample: A Creative Memoir:
“When winter displaced fall, reading spots in front of the fireplaces [her family had three in the house] were at a premium. The best locale was in our living room. There the reader could loll on thick cafe-au-lait carpeting. A mesh screen protected errant bookworms from flying sparks. [….] Just off the kitchen, the den was a snug reading room with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Here were found the classics: Crime and Punishment, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, Gulliver’s Travels, and rows more. The books in this room were leather-bound and gleamed in the light of the brass lamp that hung suspended from the ceiling. An overstuffed sofa, ideal for sprawling, ran wall to wall, bookcase to window. The only other furniture was Mother’s writing desk and a straight-backed chair. [….]
“Hidden behind a magic wooden panel, the stereo played Dave Brubeck for my father or, if my mother did the programming, ‘The Nutcracker Suite.’ [….] Upstairs, in the long hallway that ran between the bedrooms, there was another floor-to-ceiling bookcase — and this one not for classics. Here was the family cache of mysteries and big, popular potboilers like Exodus, The Listener and Dear and Glorious Physician. Here was my brothers’ stash of Hardy Boys and my older sister Connie’s Nancy Drews. I do not know that I read every book, but I do know that I tried.”
Doesn’t that sound just like heaven?
MRA
That’s my kind of heaven all right! The only things missing were a cup of something hot to drink and a completely relaxed cat dreaming by the hearth.