Priorities

Found this pic on Flickr, and couldn't help but agree with the quote from Ana Quindlen that Kristi (Flickr screen name: effulgence- which means a brilliant radiance...I looked it up!) used to title her work. Such a cool shot, and one that means a lot to all of us readers out there. As for the quote, well, it's just superb. Here it is:

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

Really says it all, you know? Raising two readers, I can see how this applies to my life, and I have books everywhere. In a marathon cleaning session earlier in the week this hit home. I cleaned it all from top to bottom, really sweated it out because the house was a mess and the summer affords me the time to attend to these things, and in that process ended up re-shelving at least twenty books. Some were in piles, some were on nightstands, some were on coffee tables and dinner tables and breakfast bars and counters, well, you get the idea. And it made me happy to think that my kids are being raised in this environment, where their rooms, although not necessarily clean, are the repositories of lots of books.

My youngest is reading the Camp Confidential book series, and my oldest can't squeeze in enough Harry Potter and Twilight (she's read both sets at least five times each) between summer reading books like About a Boy and The Notebook (not really a literary masterpiece, but different in that it had no vampires or wizards!). I'm finishing Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country, a mammoth combination of three books about the Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century and a National Book Award winner.

And this makes me happy (as my friend Tricia will attest to; come to think of it, her house is pretty well stocked with books, too!), because even if your house is messy, as long as there are books in it, it is a home, a place where ideas can roam as free as the dust bunnies, and where the soul can fly free. I suppose you still have to clean, though.