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| photo: Joshua Lewis/Seattle Refined | |
Seattle Refined's "series on the at-home must-haves of our city's movers and shakers" interviewed David Wright of the Seattle Public Library. Among our favorite exchanges:
When do you read at home?
When falling asleep, when waking up, and at times in between.
Where do you read at home?
We have a few prime spots, including a chaise lounge in our secluded study that gets good natural light in the afternoon, and a great bathtub for reading on cold dark nights, though truly a cool bath and a book have begun to look tempting this hot summer. (I'd be remiss if I didn't add: no library books in the bath, please!) Mostly in bed: that's where the bulk of our reading happens, both silently and aloud.
Let's talk organization. How do you keep track of your books?
Ha! Badly. Most librarians are very well organized, and take a special joy in keeping everything its place. I'm the other kind of librarian, and my home shelving system is pretty whimsical and frankly disorganized. In my basement library, books are two-deep on the shelves and mostly wedged in any which way in a subjective hodgepodge. Some titles are grouped on a theme, while others are arranged by chance, by size and even by color. Public libraries have to have an internally consistent organization, but personal libraries can follow whatever suits their creator's fancy, and I feel at home in a somewhat chaotic forest of books. I like those kinds of bookstores too--great tumbledown used bookstores that send you digging through piles in search of hidden treasure. I do keep my library books in one or two spots, in an effort to reduce the amount of fines I pay each month, and would recommend the same strategy to others.