
The other night we were at a dinner party at our friends the Begelys and someone asked me what a daily or every other daily blogger does when they have nothing to say. Anka Begley said, “Tracey posts pictures.” Which is totally true. That is exactly what I do. Though I even do it sometimes when I have something to say. For instance today I have five blogs waiting for take-off in the runway called my head; but I have spent nine hours doing the copy-edit on my book and I am sort of out of words or at least the ability to really make something tangible out of them.
AT OUR HOUSE WE GROW BOOKS
The other night we were at dinner at our friends the Begelys’ and someone asked me what a daily or every other daily blogger does when they have nothing to say. Anka Begley said, “Tracey posts pictures.” Which is totally true. That is exactly what I do. Though I even do it sometimes when I have something to say. For instance today I have five blogs waiting for take-off in the runway called my head; but I have spent nine hours doing the copy edit on my book and I am sort of out of words or at least the ability to really make something tangible out of them.
I was thinking however about our house and how it grows books. I said that to Glenn last night as I was running around trying to make order out of the piles that sprout up like well-informed weeds.
This is not surprising as Glenn sells them and collects them and we read tons of them.
And aside from reading them and weeding them I am now writing one; not to mention most of our friends write them. So they just seem to grow and grow and grow.
Yesterday while Lucy was having her tennis lesson I went off to Book Hampton and happily found cute Zach Fishman still working there. Despite my environment being overrun by them I guess I thought we needed more.
I gave in and bought The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, as I seem to be the only person on the planet who has not read it. Glenn spent the last ten days reading all three – really, he read all three in ten days. He actually didn’t watch baseball while he was engrossed in LarssonVille.
He is so taken by them when Taylor and I came out of the gym on Sunday he was talking to all the young girls who had just finished Hot Yoga and were glistening with sweat running down their hard, tattooed bodies. We decided he had spent so many hours with the girl with the dragon tattoo he was looking for one in person. But all these girls had were OMS and Shivas– not a dragon in sight.
We have so many books I forget what we have and sometimes buy duplicates. Yesterday I came home with a copy of Jim Salter’s Dusk, a book we have had forever. But somehow Zach (when he saw that I had just bought a new book of letters between Jim and Robert Phelps) decided I must read Dusk. I’ve read it twice, but when looking at it it looked different so I thought maybe it was More Dusk. Though knowing Jim the concept of his publishing book called More Dusk is ludicrous; but I bought it anyway. It shows you what a good salesman Zach Fishman is, he got me to buy a book I already had by telling me it it was a new one. It turns out to be a new edition. If anyone gets this as a gift from me you will know when I bought it.
So I came home lugging five more volumes to add to our book jungle and then started complaining about how we had books everywhere and started to repile them and organize the shelves– and don’t ask me how I have turned this into a blog. I was just going to post photos.
I will say this, it confounds me when I go to other people’s homes and they have no books at all. I will take my unruly, untended book garden any day over a house with no books.




When I look at these pictures I realize next week I have to spend some serious time organizing the shelves.