Once Loved Books...

I have a house full of books...a shelf of art books, another one of watercolour reference books, another for quilting, knitting and needlework, one for paper craft, journaling and book-making, several for novels, and one on the stairway for very old and once-loved books. 

Sadly I do not pull books off that last shelf very often..but they are special to me..books that my mom loved and books that my grandmother loved -  books that they kept and then passed on to me. 

I grew up in a house with books. My mom introduced me to her favourites and the usual ones my generation read as children. As I got older, the library became my favourite haunt always signing out the next in the Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys series. I was learning to love books. 

As well, every year on my birthday, my grandmother gave me a book that she hoped I would love and keep..usually leather bound, often with golden edges on the pages and charming old illustrations inside ..books by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and of course Shakespeare....and oh yes, poetry by Robbie Burns...my grandmother loved Robbie Burns! 

To put it mildly, my grandmother had high expectations for my reading habits..I think I mentioned once before in my journal that she gave me a boxed copy of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens  for "graduating INTO Grade 2" ! Really? 

I got the message early in life that books are special and you keep them? At least some of them...heh heh...I am working on that....the "some of them" part. I still keep books..just in case I might want to refer to them..or re-read them...Like really? But I am now realizing that I need to part with most of them...I often sit in my living room surrounded by all those books and ask myself,  "If I had to downsize and move out of my house tomorrow which of all those books would I keep? "  Yikes! Probably most of them could go without much regret...as not many of them are truly  "loved". 

No question though, about my Grade 1 graduation present! I would keep that one for sure, and ones that remind me of my mom and my grandmother...They have had such an influence on my life - in many ways, but one has been passing on to me a love of books. 

Recently, I decided that every now and then I should pull one of those old books off the shelf and give it a bit of love.... which I did today...Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. And, after all those years, I still love those illustrations!