Today was book unpacking day.  I admitted defeat with three or four boxes left, which seemed inevitable since we moved from a 5-bookshelf home to a 3-bookshelf home.  Our new house has more of just about everything, but definitely no built-in bookshelves.  We’ll have to improvise.

I couldn’t believe what a difference it made in the house to unpack some of our books.  As the book nerd in the family, most of the books are mine.  And as they came out of the box one by one (or in a giant stack most of the time), they reminded me of all these different times in my life.  

I just love books for that.  I would almost rather have a book that I read on a trip than a photo album of the trip.  The books remind me of everything I was thinking about at the time–of what I cared about and what I saw.  Seeing all of those books stacked up made me want to read as quickly as I can, so I can store new memories in new books.  

Speaking of awesome book-ish things, have you ever seen the “Ideal Bookshelf” website?  Jane Mount’s art combines lots of things I love (pretty and books, for starters), and it gives such a fun look into people’s lives by depicting their most treasured books.

And this is what my ideal bookshelf looks like at the moment: 

It’s a little bit more shelf-like and amoebic than Jane Mount’s ideal, but it would also hold real books, which is a plus.