Medicine Chest of the Soul

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need ~ Cicero

For years I've told the kids that one day we'll build a stone turretted library in the back that is connected to the house by means of dark dusty subterranean passages.

Our current library is where the dining room used to be before I decided that books were more important than formal meals. Wall-to-wall shelves in the 10 by 12 room are not really enough and my library has a tendency to encroach on the rest of the house.

Books spill out onto every horizontal surface, and I suppose the fact that both Anna and I tend to have many books on the go at once doesn't help (last time I checked she was reading Harry Potter and James Herriot and something she picked up from the book fair and a book about Guinevere and Horrid Henry; and I am embarrassed to confess how many different books I am reading have scattered about waiting to be picked up and finished).

So we either need to get rid of some books (but let's be realistic: that's not likely to happen), or we need a bigger library.

I found the one I want.

So it's the Parliamentary Library in Ottawa. But I was thinking a slightly smaller scaled down version might be just the thing.

Either that or a replica of the Beast's library in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. I don't mind admitting that I coveted that library from the moment I first saw the movie.

The medicine chest of the soul. ~ Library at Thebes, inscription over the door