I Love Books!

My mom and I went thrifting yesterday . It's one of our favorite things to do and it had been quite a few weeks since we had last gone. I've promised myself that I'm not going to buy any more pictures, wall hangings, dishes, any type of nick-knack at all until I have a huge yard sale and get rid of about a million and one things that are already in my garage. So mostly I go to just look and hang out with my mom.


We have a Goodwill that we call the bookstore. Believe it or not, the only thing they sell is books. Tons of books, shelves and shelves of books! It's what I picture heaven to look like only with a food court and a Starbucks and Keanu Reeves behind the counter making my latte!


But I digress. This bookstore has tons of paperbacks for 60 cents and hardbacks for 80 cents. Can you believe it? I visit this store a lot. I usually go every weekend and sometimes I stop by on my way home from work. Hence, I have a ton of books. I have boxes and boxes sitting in the garage that I'm planning to include in my yard sale. The ones that don't sell I will contribute back to Goodwill. Maybe I should donate them to Salvation Army instead, o I don't end up buying them back again.


Some of the prettier books or books I really like I keep and I have them in stacks in my closet until I can get a built in bookcase like this in my living room.

I think a built in bookcase would look perfect on the wall shown in the photo below. This is the wall in my living room that I want the bookcase on.

To the right of the picture is my dining room/kitchen. The door to the left leads to the bedrooms. So it's not a great place to put a television as people are passing in front of it all the time. 

The fireplace isn't real, it's a faux one with one of those little machines that turns red paper against a light and it's supposed to look like fire but it doesn't, plus there's the irritating click, click, click of the little wheel turning! But it was here when I bought the house and until I can have my dream bookcase as shown above I enjoy my little fake fireplace and love to decorate my mantel. The ones in the photo are my Valentines Day Decorations.


My mom bought me these 5 angels at Goodwill almost a year ago and I change the ribbons around their neck to match the different seasons. For Christmas they wore gold ribbons:

For Valentines Day I dressed them up in red ribbons lined with fur. . . Naughty Angels!

I'm thinking I'd love to find some plaid pink, yellow, blue and green for Easter, but it will just have to be whatever there is at the dollar store.


But this post isn't about Angels or seasonal decor, it's about books and what to do with all the books I collect. I found this website that gave me a good idea of what to do with those books until I get my dream bookcase built.

Book Art!  Or as Los Angeles Artist Mike Stilkey calls them Book Sculpture. The artist takes books and uses them create art. Here you see him painting on a stack of books. Click on any of the photos to enlarge.

Here's a whole wall of Book Sculptures. Aren't these amazing? Apparently he gets these books from the trash so he's basically recycling so no harm done. What a great way to reuse books, don't you think and prevent them from being tossed into the trash.

And he has several more photos at this website Books as Art plus you can visit the artists website at MikeStilkey.com

So do you keep your books or do you pass them on as soon as you've read them? Do you re-read books? I have to admit, I don't...but I love to keep the ones I've enjoyed.