When we used to walk past bookshops, one of us has to be the strong one, grab the other's hand, and steer them gently (forcefully) away so that we didn't accidentally enter and buy armloads of books. I don't think I could have fallen in love with Jamie if it wasn't for his bookshelf - like @happysmileyman in his beautiful live in vehicle Alice, Jamie used to live in an old mobile library, a Bedford TK, and his bookshelf was, like Alice's bookshelf, tiny but fascinating. How could I not love a man who had Buddhist cosmology next to a book on foraging wild mushrooms? That had Dostoyesky nestled next to the Koran next to Home Mechanics next to a travel book on Sierra Leone?

@wizardave 's challenge this week asks us to reflect on our libraries, and you can see his invitation here.. It's a beautiful invitation because by posting, we reveal a little about ourselves, and by reading, we learn more about others. And that's what the Steemit community is best at. I would love to see this challenge take off and see the bookshelves of other Steemians, so like @happysmileyman, I'm adding an extra onto this one too! I'm going to tag 3 people, and if they respond to my invitation, I'll give them 100 percent of my upvote! I know it's not much, but hey! It's what I got! I tag @mountainjewel , @mrprofessor and @mtnmdeadowmomma !! Have fun guys!

Oh my goodness where do I start? We have about 5 bookshelves in our house, but the prettiest ones are the ones Jamie made out of scavenged form ply, pictured above. There's about a thousand books in our house at least, and I simply can't show them all here - plus, it's hard to take a sharp photo with my phone as it's dark inside and I don't want to clog up this post with hideously blurry photos!

I only just re-ordered my books, as I do every few years, so I'll start with the new order and zip about happily from there.

The Yoga Shelf

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations; your conscious expands in every direction; and you find yourself in a great, new and wonderful world - Patanjali

I'll start here because I only just brought my yoga books out from my yoga room and into the living area. I think my favourite out of these is my copy of Light on Yoga, as I've had it since I was 16, but of course Patanjali is the one I dip into all the time, as well as Rumi and I love the ones on yoga anatomy too, as that was a whole new world for me when I did my teacher training last year!

The DIY, Building and Gardening Shelf

Architecture is the thoughtful making of a space - Louis Kahn

Dad is a draftsman, so he's always been interested in spaces and architecture. His bookshelf on this is amazing - ours is quite small as when we were dreaming of making our home, we had no money and no money means no books. I think my favourites on this shelf are the Lloyd Kahn books, beginning with Shelter and then Homework, Handbuilt Shelter, which I can still find inspiration in to this day.

The Cooking and Food Shelf

My favourites are the Moro series, because we were going to move to Spain once, and they are full of beautiful Spanish/Morrocan fusion food. I love the Mushrooms book too, and the Eat the Weeds one. A lot of these were poured through when we were learning so much about abundance in the wild, especially when we lived in England. I barely use cookbooks now - I just make it up as I go along, as I'm an intuitive cook, but I love the inspiration and beautiful cookbook gives. Oh - and the Terre A Terre one is awesome, but I'll never cook anything from it - too complicated! Their restaurant in Brighton, UK is amazing - I've never seen such amazing things done with vegetarian food!

The Fiction Shelves

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us - Paul Theroux

I used to read a LOT of fiction - it was a way of escaping. Not so much anymore! Some of these shelves are in colour order (yeah I know, it was a thing that day!) but the Zola shelf is pretty special to me and Jamie, as we were collecting them at the time. We both really loved the book Germinal, which was about the coal miner's strike in France in the 1890's, which sounds boring, but was amazing to read! There's a few zombie books in there, as I'm a huge zombie fan, but will only read the literary zombie fiction because I'm a big fat literary snob - Colston Whitehead's Zone One is a good one. There's also a fair bit of Murakami, which is just so mesmerising to read, and I love DH Lawrence too, and John Steinbeck - ah too many to name really.

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The Travel Shelf

A library is full of new worlds to travel - Unknown

In the last few years, we've realised how easy it is to get good cheap travel books from opportunity or charity shops. Jamie reads a lot of these and I'll dip in occasionally too.

Other Notables Hard to Classify

I loved the Pharmokopoeia series. I can't really describe them adequately so I'll leave it to these quotes to explain them! Anyone interested in literature, mythology, drugs, medicine and herbcraft will adore them.

"The great joy of Pharmako/Poeia lies in the simultaneous drawing out of simplicity and complexity. Simple, so far as it draws together the vast territory of the human-poison relationship into a single, poetic alchemy; yet complex, in that it blows apart the narrow simplistic understandings that stratify each bubble of understanding. This is a truly excellent book and should be on the shelves and minds of all poisoners, all students of life, literature and ethnobotany. Whether your poison is Salvia divinorum, tobacco, alcohol, Nitrous oxide, or bitter berry, or even just the unquenchable thirst of a psychoactive knowledge, this text should be a given." Psychedelic Press UK

@happysmileyman and @movingman, you might also notice Battle of the Beanfield in there too which is a must for anyone who lives in a vehicle!

There's also a heap of physics and science books - that's Jamie's jam, being a physicist an all.

I have always been really attached to books. When I moved over to the UK to be with Jamie, I brought all my books with me, and we collected so many together that we had crates of them to ship back again. Bookshelves have always been a focal point in my parent’s house, and in mine and my sister’s – we value a good book, and they become an extension of who we are. Lately, however, I’ve been culling. This might sound like a crime for bibliophiles, but I realised I had boxes and boxes of books that I will never read again, and that are gathering dust. I’m beginning to resent possessions, and both of us are always wondering – if the house burnt down, or if we went travelling, or reduced our lives to a backpack or a van, what would we keep? What would we miss? So I’ve been slowly reducing, taking books to op-shops for others to love, or to pass on to family and friends. I’m a different person to what I was back then, too, and some books just don’t apply to the ‘me’ I am now. However, saying that, some books are absolutely me, absolutely us – a story of our lives on shelves.

If there's anything in there you want some more information on, please do get in touch! Like being directed out of a bookstore, you have to gag me to stop talking about books, so I'll try to restrain myself here. I'd really love to see your bookshelves - what an awesome challenge @wizardave!

I hope you enjoyed this walk through of our library! One day, I hope you'll pop by for a cuppa, and you can take away a pile to read. xx