This is what it is

I love reading. I love that quiet time spent in another place, another country, another time, the place that books take you to. Ink and paper, the weight of a book, the smell of books, the texture of paper, beautiful. I love reading a book that has been given to me by Robin. It is almost like spending time with someone when you read their gift.

My parents gave me some money for Christmas, knowing that the year had been a hard one for me. For a while I just thought to let the everyday household budget eat the money up, but then I decided that there was something else I wanted to do with it. So I wrote to Mr B's.

Some weeks ago I had visited Mr B's and asked for a recommendation for a book that was beautiful both  to look at and to read. They handed me The Girl with Glass Feet, a heavy hardback with silver edges and an elegant cover. How well it fit the desire, beautiful to look at, hold, read. So I wrote and asked them, if I paid them a set amount of money ( I did try magic beans first but they were having none of it!), could they do this once a month for me. Could they send me an elegantly wrapped book of their choosing, beautiful to read, something to transport out of the everyday, off and away. Mr B's run an amazing 'book spa' where you can go and talk to them about books you have loved reading, things you enjoy and they recommend books for you. They already have a service where they will, for a small fee, wrap books and send them out as gifts for you, sort of like Amazon but with more style. At Christmas when I went there there were piles of books stacked high waiting to head off in the post, wrapped in brown paper and string with a seal of The Book Monkey in red.

Anyway, it seemed that Mr B's had been thinking along similar lines to the way that I was thinking, although still unsure of the mechanics of the scheme, so would I mind being a guinea pig. A book guinea pig. Bliss.

So, for the next 11 months they will carefully select something that they hope will delight my senses. This morning when the first package arrived I was hoping to leave it sitting by my work table for a while, but curiosity got the better of me. ( Too much living with cats). You can buy this service for yourself, if you feel like spoiling yourself,a feeling that I often have, or give it as a gift, sort of like a magazine subscription only books instead, and what an amazingly wonderful way to show someone that you love them with Valentine's Day coming up.  I think it would make the perfect present for a new born child, a picture book a month.

Beautiful. Now I must finish the Dragonflight which only has a few pages left, enter the world of The Coral Thief, meet the enigmatic philosopher-thief and wander the labyrinthine streets and gambling houses of Paris in 1815.
I need to make more time to read.