“a book is a gift you can open again and again” -Garrison Keillor
bonjour friends, i hope you’re having a lovely sunday. i have to admit it’s been a lazy day but that seems to be the only way to take time to leaf through the pages of my favorite books. there are so many books and so little time as some wise soul once said. are you obsessed with beautiful books? for some of us they’re treasured friends, constant and reassuring, they transport us and show us something different each time we open them.
i started looking for a pretty book to add to my mom’s collection since she always has them displayed on her coffee table. i got lost in a world of volumes i’d love to have myself and still haven’t decided which will be best for her birthday. she’s a traditionalist but has a modern streak. her bold style still influences me to this day. anyway i couldn’t resist putting them all together even if it’s just in a virtual library via this blog post. if you have a fave or one i should look into let me know. till then i hope you enjoy this little collection and maybe get some inspiration for yourself. the one below is tempting me to try a saffron shade to contrast my one pink wall. click on the cover to see more images and what’s inside with a link to amazon. happy browsing!
“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
“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”
Jhumpa Lahiri
“The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.”
Northrop Frye
“A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.”
Charles Baudelaire
“It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
Jane Austen
“A book is a dream you hold in your hands.”
Neil Gaiman
“No two persons ever read the same book.”
Edmund Wilson
“I never feel lonely if I’ve got a book – they’re like old friends. Even if you’re not reading them over and over again, you know they are there. And they’re part of your history. They sort of tell a story about your journey through life.”
Emilia Fox
Top 10 French Coffee Table Books for 2020
Bonjour toute le monde! It’s that time between holidays when there are a few moments of quiet to get lost in the wonderland of the web…and you know what they say, the time we enjoy wasting is not wasted time! That said, it did take a minute to round up this wishlist of books, some of which are written by talented women I’ve admired for years. Each is filled with art, furniture, fabrics and trim, decorated doors and ceilings, chandeliers, outdoor spaces, architecture and style that has stood the test of time. I’d love to have any one of them on my cocktail table. If you’re looking for the perfect gift, check these beauties out for yourself and get lost in a world of imagination. And so, for those who’d rather curl up with a book than a phone…we say, happy reading!
Have more cocktail books to recommend? Please share in the comments below!
ok this last one isn’t really a book, it’s a decorative journal with blank pages but i do love the cover!
Just fyi, please note that some of the links are affiliate. I only recommend products I love because I think you’ll love them too!
books are a uniquely portable magic – S. King
hello friends, how are you on this wintery sunday night? i hope you’re cozy enjoying time to do the things you love. does it seems that there’s never enough time to do it all? why is it that the more efficient we get technologically, the less time we actually have? it rushes by so fast and life goes at the speed of light. what can we do to make time? i believe there is a way to slow it all down, something i neglected for awhile, what with the glamour and allure of the world on the touch screen. it’s the simple and timeless act of cracking a book.
‘Why Readers, Scientifically, Are The Best People To Fall In Love With”
“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
― Francois Mauriac
the distractions of tv and hand held devices seem to affect a lot of us in the same way. maybe it’s our curiosity for something new, that next image, article, (or potential date)! that keeps us glued to the phone. maybe our attention spans are shorter or we’ve just stopped carving out alone time to curl up in a chair to read.
“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.”
― Louis L’Amour
over the holidays my family gifted me with books and journals. it’s been a long time since we exchanged books and it was a really nice feeling to hold them and fall in love again. it sparked a pinterest search for an image of a woman reading and it revealed wonderful category of art that i never really thought about: the reader. for centuries, artists and photographers have been capturing men, women and children under the spell of a good book. turns out the ways we read are as varied as what we read.
“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson
i don’t want to do a lot of talking about it, i’ve got reading and writing to get to! but i wanted to share some of the images that came up and are bookmarked on my Pinterest Books Board.
it might be a fun to have some of these images together in a book and see what changes through the ages. the positions of the reader, their clothes, the decor, the hairstyles. what doesn’t change is a sort of quiet majesty we as viewers witness and we as readers understand. we read and we learn. we’re listening silently to another’s voice and are hearing a story that is so intimately shared from the page to the mind.
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”
― Carl Sagan
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges
“A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.”
― Astrid Lindgren
“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau
Franz Eybl – “Reading Girl” – 1850
Un soir d’été à Paris, Cuno Amiet, 1890
John White Alexander Repose, 1895
L. Kokamiagi.Winter.1977
Marguerite 1918 Poster by Guy Rose
“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
Albert Samuel Anker, 1910
Woman Reading – Antoine Vincent French, b.1956
Carlton Alfred Smith, Storytime 1897
“Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.”
― Nicholson Baker
well it’s getting late and time to turn in. is there anything you’re reading now that you’d care to recommend? i’d love to hear anything you’re enjoying and how you make time to read in a busy world. sweet dreams!
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
―
the paris apartment 