A Collection Obsession

Books with a Tale to Tell

Sharing a collection obsession in books to take you around the world.

Hello March!

Let’s bring on spring! Just waiting for sunshine and blooms.

I’m guilty of being a collector. I readily admit that I love collecting a few things. Things like pretty china – dishes, turquoise jewelry, old silver (plated on dishes & on bits & spurs), white dishes, chairs, & books & just rustic things. These are just a few of my top picks of things that I like to add to my collections.

Don’t you just love books? I certainly do.

I grew up with books being all around me. As a child, my mother and father read to me all the time & every so often one of my older siblings would take over. My parents were avid readers and also loved books. On a day during my walk-about at a previous career, the library was discarding old & outdated books. There, in a box were stacks of these very navy-blue books with gold lettering stating World Book. Now, while the digital age has revolutionized how information is shared and digested, it has also rendered longstanding reference tools obsolete. Encyclopedias, once considered indispensable to homes for higher education, have largely gone by the way.

So, when I ran across this box of Encyclopedias that were being discarded from a library, it made me feel a bit sad. I found myself admiring them with their decorated & detailed gold patterns. All that beautiful gold lettering on their very navy covers and those pages with the gilt edges! Without doubt, the most elegant of decorated edges. They were all classics! I had walked by those encyclopedias stacked in a box a couple of times and admired their beautiful covers. When we were told that they were free, it was pretty much a no brainer that they were going home with me. It didn’t take me long to gathered up that box and practically run to my truck.

A Collection Obsession

Now you see, Mr. M, I will call him, often gets a bit frustrated with me because of the obsession I have with collecting. My first thought was where can I put them until my house is finished being built and second, how can I hide them in the new house so that he won’t see them? Well, my mind wandered a bit on this one, & then I thought, I know, I’ll hide them in plain sight.

So, here’s what I did. Little by little those books came in the house & little stacks were put on tables to display vases of flowers (Everything goes with flowers!), Halloween decor, candles & vintage items. I stacked them up here & there until I had almost the entire set in the house. You know what? I have most of them stacked in the office & Mr. M hasn’t even noticed. If he has, he hasn’t said a word.

As you can see, there they are…in the office…triple stacked, hiding in plain sight, & decorated with flowers.

Now, they don’t always look like this, but I thought that they were too beautiful not to be romanticized a bit, sort of where nature & literature is seen as beauty, and people can be heavily influenced with their emotions. If that makes any sense at all. Hopefully for Mr. M.

Books always have a story to go with them. If it isn’t on the inside, it definitely is on the outside. If only we still had them and read them for these books cand take you on trips around the world.

I hope you enjoyed this tale, and I’ve inspired you to gather stacks of books, vintage or new. Look for those with interesting & lovely covers, gilded pages, tattered & torn. Stack them, tie them up with twine to display & elevate those treasured items around your house.

XXOOs

Thank you for stopping by the blog today. Always sharing my wild west styling for my wild west livin’.

You can find collections of vintage encyclopedias here with varying price ranges.