Within a day Xander moved everything he wanted into the house on the bluff. The books
presented the biggest challenge. The library wouldn’t hold all of them.
“I never imagined this house would be too small for anything.”
He shrugged, studying the shelves, now filled with books. And the tubs on the floor, still full of them.
“You don’t want all your books in one place anyway. We should scatter some around.”
“There are too many to scatter.”
“Don’t even think about saying I should get rid of some.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
Maybe she had—just for an instant—and had just as quickly rejected the idea.
“I just don’t know where to put them. They don’t deserve to be stuck in tubs either. How will I know what’s in there I want to read?”
“Kevin could do another wall of books.”
“I’d love a wall of books,” she considered. “But I don’t know where.”
The Obsession
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As PBS launches ‘The Great American Read,’ designers
and actor Ming-Na Wen weigh in on building around books.
Where you read can be almost as important as what you read.
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"That's quite a library."
"Oh, that's just some of them."
He stayed where he was when she crossed over. Joyce, Yeats, Shaw. Those were to be expected. O'Neill, Swift, and Grayson Thane, of course. But there was a treasure trove of others. Poe, Steinbeck, Dickens, Byron. The poetry of Keats and Dickinson and Browning. Battered volumes of Shakespeare and equally well-thumbed tales by King and MacAffrey and McMurtrey.
"An eclectic collection," she mused. "And there's more?"
"I keep them here and there around the house, so if you're in the mood, you don't have to go far. A book's a pleasant thing to have nearby."
Born in Shame