Ways To Ask Someone to Be Your Bookish Valentine
“Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
Valentine’s Day may be the most bookish of holidays. Think about it. What other holiday encourages people memorize Byron, compare each other to a summer’s day, or sweat over the syntax of a note scrawled on a Pokemon themed card pack from CVS? (Who wouldn’t want to spend the Eevee-ning with you?)
October is usually a time for orange leaves, pumpkins, ghouls, and ghosts. But, I think it should be a month of clockwork trains, aeronautical goggles, and steam-powered machines more amazing than you can imagine. In essence, October is steampunk.
October 15th marks the anniversary of when the New Orleans, the first US steamboat, made the long journey along the mighty Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from Pittsburgh, PA to New Orleans, LA. Owned by Robert Fulton and Robert R. Livingston, and built by Nicholas Roosevelt, the New Orleans was a marvel of its time and ushered in a new way for people to travel in luxury.
In honor of the New Orleans journey, here are 5 ways can have your own steampunk adventure in portable, but sadly not steam-powered, book form.
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Looking at someone's bookshelf is like gazing into the synapses between brain cells. You see something much deeper at work. You get a glimpse into what makes someone tick. The way you arrange your bookshelf is a mysterious art that can reveal the clockwork cogs spinning around in your soul.
Now, there are many different ways to arrange your beloved volumes of literature and knowledge. Each one reveals a secret about yourself. What that secret is can be up for debate, but here are a few archetypes of the bookshelf organizer club. Which one are you?
Image by MustangJoe from Pixabay
This Bastille Day, let’s raise a glass of fine (French) wine to some of the most influential French writers of the 20th century. Their thoughts and words helped to shape storytelling, invent new, mystical places, and highlight the hardships of the human condition. These authors have spun tales of fantasy, adventure, and existentialism—and we love them for it. So grab a bottle, relax on a chaise longue, and crack open a book by one of these literary masters. Vive la France!
Actually building bookshelves for your house or apartment is a wonderfully creative, and sometimes painful, experience. You can adjust the size and design to fit your particular needs, all while discovering the upper limits of your pain tolerance every time you miss a nail.
But when you finally finish lathering on that final coat of lacquer, stand back, and admire your wonderful new home for stories, that euphoria of creation will sweep over you. That beast of a bookshelf was built by you and the sweat off your brow. It is a place for you to proudly display not only your books, but also your craftsmanship.
Note: If you experience too much euphoria after applying the lacquer, open a window.
After exploring some of the deepest recesses of DIY sites, we’ve found you three of the best build-it-yourself bookshelf instructions.
Most readers can build worlds in their minds from simply reading the words on a page. But, sometimes they are not so good a building practical things to store their volumes of words. Some readers know what a hammer is in theory and how it is used in the context of Thor, but they’ve never picked one up at the local hardware store.
What do you do if you want that homemade touch to your bookshelf, but don’t know the difference between flat and phillips head screws? You turn to Etsy.
Thankfully bookshelf creating experts can be found all over Etsy selling their wares. They range from the tiny and cute, to the massive and impractical. What makes it even better is that many of these helpful craftspeople can custom make your shelf to almost any dimension you want. Just not the 4th dimension, they haven’t figured that one out yet.
Here’s a look at some of our favorite bookshelves you can buy on Etsy right now.
