I guess I’m not a shoe person nor a purse person. I’m a food lover and book lover. So it should be no surprise when I start drooling  each time I’m at the cookbook section of some place   Here’s a peek at my personal stash of books, my library. For your amusement/ entertainment. It looks like I’m a full pledged foodie and book lover !   I have more cookbooks and food related books than any other genre.  I do have interior decorating books, travel memoirs, Pioneer history books, Victoria Magazines, Tea time magazines, but most of my books have to do with food, eating customs, food history, food reference, food from from different cultures , food from the past and such. I’ve collected these books here, through the years, finding them on ebay, Amazon, books sales, yard sales, book stores.  I’ve grown somewhat attached to them  that I am not that fond of lending my books, lest they walk away never to be seen again, or worse, earmarked or used as a coaster . They are like friends to me and losing a favorite one is like losing a good friend. I’ve got my favorite books bookmarked so much, they’ve become so much thicker because of the paper bookmarks I’ve put in them. Favorite cookbooks are splattered with food stains & flour, and I don’t mind that as long as I’m the one who did it. I do get rid of books all the time, replacing retired ones with newer models. My tastes have evolved through the years and so does my taste in books. Though tastes change, the love for cookbooks remains.

I’ve always been partial to cookbooks ever since I could read, which explains the ratio of cookbooks to non-cookbooks.  I do read them too and I read ‘em like you would a novel, though some are like  coffee table books whose pictures serve as  inspiration in my many cooking experiments. I am always cooking. I literally live in the kitchen; it’s my haven. My stress therapy if you like to call it that.

I love browsing at gorgeous food photos,  gravitating towards cookbooks with lotsa colored pictures in them and anecdotes.  I’ve upgraded my collection to accommodate such preference, letting go of tons of cookbooks that don’t have pictures. I still keep a couple plain ones if I find them to be of substantial merits but there’s just something about beautiful photography. After all, we eat with our eyes first. So go ahead and take a peek at my bookshelves. I know you’re curious. If you click on each of the photos, you’ll get the full image for each, so you’ll be able to read the titles. No more squinting. I’ve tried to arrange my books according to subjects  but a few manage to end up in the wrong section every so often. After all, I’m always taking them off the shelves and taking them places…

” The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”  ~Mark Twain, attributed

I’ve been running out of space for my growing collection ,but for me, there’s always room for one more. A bibliophile for life. Can’t help it. I grew up with books. Growing up, our living room and bedrooms were lined wall to wall with built in bookshelves from floor to ceiling, and desks and tables piled high with books, from ” The Philosophy of Socrates” to “Medicine of the Ancient Maya”. My father always bought books and loved book stores more than anything. It seems he would always be either reading or writing when I saw him. I remember him sending crates and crates of books back to the Philippines , after we left New York when I was a young child, to return to our homeland. That’s how much importance he put on books and reading . I was grateful for all the books I had access to all my growing up years.

If you have never said “Excuse me” to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time.  ~Sherri Chasin Calvo

It’s funny but my kids are book worms too and their personal library is bursting at the seams. Broken book shelves, sagging books shelves, books strewn everywhere in the house. The first area they dart to when they go to any store is the book section. They can read for hours, contentedly, and yes, they’ve gotten into trouble numerous times, for reading when they’re supposed to be doing  chores or studying.

My kids are fortunate to be exposed to more books than I was, since the public libraries in the U.S. are amazing!  The selection is astounding and you can borrow from other public libraries too. Borrowing to your heart’s content and never running out of good books to read, mmmmm. Each person can check out 50 books at a time! That’s really somethin. We’ve sure taken advantage of this privilege big time. We have to use a rolling cart to haul our book finds from the library. We’re there at least once a week.

Easy access to books allows my kids to read and read. They cannot get enough of reading. My eldest read the complete unabridged   “The Lord of the Rings Trilogy” and “The chronicles of Narnia” when he was seven, and by his own choice, making the mother in me beam with pride. He was hooked on these classics at an early age since we read classics out loud to them during their earlier years and still do to this day. Amazing how you can mold their taste in books at such tender age. I didn’t read these books till I was in high school. Reading has opened up a whole new world for them. They know they can be transported to places like the medieval ages just by a flick of a page. They’re like sponges, eager to learn and share what they’ve learned through their book reading journeys. It’s like downloading an avalanche of information daily and loving every minute of it. Science and exciting stories thrill them. Will they ever inherit my love for cookbooks? Who knows. I wish I wish. Oh I wish. In the meantime, I’m helping them build their own library collection.

So far, I have 3 book shelves for myself, 3 shelves for the kids, and 3/4th of a shelf for hubby.

“Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment, even adjusting for parents’ education, father’s  occupational status and other family background characteristics,”  reports the study, recently published in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. “Growing up in a home with 500 books would propel a child 3.2 years further in education, on average,  than would growing up in a similar home with few or no books.”

Read more here:
http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/home-libraries-provide-h…

Here’s to books and the love of reading!!!!

“A house without books is like a room without windows.”  ~Heinrich Mann

” Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”  ~Charles W. Eliot