I Like Big Books...

I cannot deny it.

I got a new book in the mail yesterday night when we got home after having looked at four (!! our realtor is energetic, but we were dragging tail by the end) houses yesterday. I opened the very heavy box, trying to remember what I'd ordered, and to my delight discovered that it was the book I'd bought myself as a reward for landing the new job and becoming a real Scientist. It's been in my wishlist for a long time, since the Insectress recommended it to me, and I finally broke down and shelled out for it.

So today I shoved it in my purse, and as is my habit, put the lunchbag and purse on the passenger seat of my car before leaving for work. Because I might have time at lunch to look at the very pretty new book with all it's glossy photos. I headed down the road to work...

Something you might already know about most modern cars - and something I had known about mine (which is 10 years old, but for me that's modern and new and all that, after a lifetime of driving beaters) - is that they nag you. Mine is an insufferable nag. If you don't do up your seatbelt, it starts to beep. If you don't immediately comply, it beeps louder and faster until you're so annoyed you do as you're told and it shuts up, placated.

So here I am, alone in the car, driving into the pearly dawn, when suddenly there's beeping. It took a second for it to register that it wasn't something on the dashboard wanting my attention as I frantically scanned to see if my engine was about to blow or something. And then the flashing red light... over there... caught my attention. I glanced quickly, my brain kicked into gear, and I pushed the purse with the book in it off the passenger seat and onto the floor. The beeping stopped. I started to giggle maniacally to myself.

Most of my books are ebooks, these days. Some are audio books. Weightless, or virtually so, they hang on the magnetic mount in my car, stowed safely in my smartphone. But some books can't properly be appreciated in electronic format, and as we're house shopping I have to make allowances for the space we need to stow bookshelves and books. In fact, the house we looked at yesterday that appealed most to us had a feature that won't be there when the current occupants move out, but it showed us just how nice it would be. A fully finished basement lined with bookshelves centered around comfy chairs and a gas fireplace. Yeah... I can see us there now. And the kitchen isn't bad, either. Priorities! I have to have someplace to put all my big books and small ones, too. Books of all shapes and sizes, they're all beautiful.