Creating a Culture of Books
Last month my brother had some friends over and one of the girls told us how our home felt like a cozy place where she could curl up and read a book all evening. I just thought that was possibly the highest compliment we could get about our home!
A home environment like that essentially, “lights a candle in the window” for the world that is incessantly busy, noisy, and entertainment-obsessed. Over the past few years we have slowly— almost without even realizing it— created a culture of books in our home. I began selling and donating the knick knacks that filled our shelves, and using every bit of spending money to purchase books to fill them instead. Our TV was taken down from the mantel and now sits disconnected in a spare room. Book stacks can be found on almost every shelf or surface. They’re in the kitchen, in the living room, at the bedside. As William Gladstone once said, “Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books— even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.”
Reading takes discipline and is a fight for our attention span in our flashy entertainment culture. It requires commitment and a firm belief that reading books is far more edifying than staring at a screen. I am not immune to the lure of the digital, but that’s where the home environment comes in. It can’t help but invite a culture of reading. The shelves filled top to bottom with books, the warm glow of the lamps at dusk, the deep comfy couch, and the kettle whistling on the stove does not create the mood for loud shows and endless scrolling. It makes me want to pick up a book and settle down, engage in quiet conversation, and drink a cozy cup of tea. It has been imperative to me these past few years to regain my focus and ability to immerse myself in a book the way I used to before social media.
If you too feel inspired to create this kind of culture in your own home, I highly recommend the book Shelf Life by George and Karen Grant. It essentially is the inspiration for this post and video below. It’s such a cozy read and if you’re a book lover this is definitely one to add to your shelf. Happy reading!
Click here to see my past, present, and future reading lists!
