The Home Library to Impress – or is it More Décor?
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By Bill Primavera
My favorite comedian has always been the late and delightfully crude Joan Rivers whom I first encountered in a rundown comedy club in Greenwich Village when I first moved to New York City. That was before she appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and became an instant hit.
I remember many of her jokes, and one of my favorites was her contention that men preferred dumb women and, if they were exploring under their clothing, they weren’t looking for their library card.
Even though my basic skill has always been writing, ironically, I was not an avid reader of great literature or even popular novels, preferring celebrity biographies and sometimes maybe historical texts. As an editor, then public relations practitioner, I always spent so much time reading newspapers and magazines, then blogs, that I didn’t have much time left over for anything else.
Shallow as it might seem, I have always liked the looks of books. From my earliest days, while still in college, I started a collection of books that looked good on my shelves. I admit that I didn’t always read them. Only a person who’s old enough not to care what other people might think could disclose such information, right?
When I moved from my small college town to the big city, most of my moving boxes contained those books, many unread, even before I owned any bookcases.
Through the years, I have learned that man is not so much what he eats but rather what he reads, and we all tend to partly judge other people on that. Consider that when anyone is interviewed on television in front of a bookcase, many of us have the tendency to look for the book titles to learn more about the interview subject.
If anyone were judging me by the books on my shelves, I received a tremendous boost in reputation when my wife’s aunt, an avid bibliophile, passed away and left us, among other things, a library that included 50 years’ worth of belonging to the Book of the Month Club. Suddenly we had to create a dedicated room in our home as “the library” in which there were books wall to wall as the only décor.
When we were planning our move to our new condo, we first engaged a master craftsman to design and build bookcases in our living room whose finish matched the mahogany of our kitchen cabinets. If I say so myself, they are beautiful. Interspersed with the books are various objets d’art and, overall, the effect is highly effective.
It makes me feel wealthy, with easy access to the world’s great minds.
Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc., the longest running public relations agency in Westchester (www.PrimaveraPR.com). To engage the services of The Home Guru to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.
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