Decorating Your Space With Books – and Then More Books
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By Bill Primavera
When I was in college, back during ancient times, I started to buy and collect books, mostly paperbacks at the time. There was a nice college bookstore at the College of William & Mary, which, if I recall correctly, was fashioned as an 18th century building, much like the architecture in its host city of Williamsburg, Va.
This activity was facilitated by the fact that I moved off-campus in the middle of my freshman year, which was illegal at the time, with a policy in place that students must be campus residents until their junior year. I rented a basement apartment (that fortunately was half above ground), which came with a five-foot-long bookcase that a former tenant had left behind. Of course, I had to fill it up.
I was encouraged to pursue the collection of books when a fellow student visited, looked at my growing collection and said, “Obviously you don’t deny yourself.” What impressed me was that books impressed others. And I kept buying books, many times not even reading them. Shallow, you say?
After graduation, I moved immediately to New York City, and because I had a hard time finding a roommate I could get along with – I wanted to live better by sharing an apartment with a roommate and split expenses – I found myself packing and unpacking those books many times. They were the only possessions I had, really, other than my clothes, before I finally settled down and got married. The books then found a more stable home, which they enjoy to this day.
During the early years of our marriage, my wife and I bought a house in Brooklyn Heights that happened to contain an antiques shop on the first floor, which came with the deal. One of our customers, an older widow who had no children of her own, “adopted” us, and she became our unofficial aunt. She happened to have belonged to the Book of the Month Club for many years and had amassed an extensive library of books, which we inherited when she passed away.
Those books necessitated the planning on our part of converting a playroom into a library in one home, and when we moved, we had a skilled carpenter construct quality bookshelves in our living room, which we now enjoy. It’s become a decorative feature of the way we live.
The books now serve as a sort of backdrop for many antique items – like small vases – that we intersperse among the titles to break up the lineup of books and render the shelves more interesting.
There have been a number of times when visitors have scanned the titles of those books, thinking that they’re learning something about us from their surveys, but in fact, they’re learning something about our Aunt Pearl.
Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc., specializing in lifestyles, real estate and development. To engage the services of The Home Guru and his team to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.
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