A room full of books...

That used to be a favourite dream: I'd live in a house with one hundred rooms, and every one of those hundred rooms would be full to bursting with books.

The coolest collection of books I ever saw was a display in an old shop in Northbridge. The books were library discards and stuff, arranged into a life-size maze, a spiral you could walk through, from foot-high at the entrance to an igloo of black-labelled murder-mysteries in the middle. My friends and I wagged school especially to go see it. We were so hardcore. And the best bit-- you got to take as many books as you could carry. I can remember walking through the front door back home, six plastic shopping bags splitting with books, and having to somehow explain where they all came from.

I don't read books--novels-- anymore. It's a bit sad and pretty stupid, really. I'm supposed to be writing a novel in a month, and I haven't read a novel in six months. I still read a lot of non-fiction, and if I find a good musician I'll treat him (inevitably male, yes) as a poet.

The last novel I read was, I think, Jane Eyre. I loved it. So romantic. Oooh...

"...understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect you to appear in the drawing-room every evening; it is my wish; don't neglect it. Now go, and send Sophie for Adele. Good-night, my--" He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.
(chapter 17)

I was wary of Mr. Rochester in the beginning. Jane is quite sensible to his faults, but deliberately overlooks them, so long as he is good to her. Ugh. And then I was worried he was going to be a second (*shudder*) Heathcliff, from Wuthering Heights. (Yes, I know, different sister.) But Mr. Rochester turns out to be a good guy, as far as I'm concerned. And he says some stuff sometimes, and you go, Whoa! That's me.

"As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I dare say it would be silent on much that the heart experiences..."
(Mr. Rochester about Jane, chapter 19)

...I reckon maybe this is why Jane Eyre is one of the greatest love stories in English literature, while Bedded by the Desert King (Mills and Boon) is not.