by Jas Faulkner
Over the past few years, I have been involved with a number of programs that involved giving away books or “releasing” them in areas where they would hopefully find new homes or at least the attention of another reader until they were passed on. As someone who loves books and owns her own personal library, it is hard to imagine a home without books.
I know they exist. As a child, I saw a few of them when visiting the homes of classmates. There was something rather sterile about those houses. The perfectly turned out living rooms with blond wood furniture, windows and glass front doors that shone seamlessly, devoid of nose prints from dogs and fingerprints from little brothers just never felt welcoming to me. My parents were sometimes dismayed that my favourite babysitter was a rather scattered elderly woman who lived in a timeworn Victorian house with her grown daughter, a half-dozen dogs who had the run of the place inside and out and bookshelves jammed into odd corners with old, odd bits of furniture nearby to settle in for a good read.
