Offices of Note (or: An Ode To Books)

I have always had a soft spot for a really great office. Nothing modern and stark though or too 'cookie-cutter'; I prefer vintage offices with walls of bookshelves, revealed brickwork and lots of windows (If you've seen 'Stranger than Fiction', I want the office where the character played by Dustin Hoffman works).

There is something about vintage, academic-looking offices that appeals to me: like the professor's office from the 70's with entirely too many resource books piled messily on shelves and then stacked on the floor once the shelves are crammed full; a paper-smattered desk with a few cold coffee mugs and a couch and lamps casting a yellow glow ... comfortable and haphazard.

Also, there is something lovely and artistic and relaxed about books themselves - heaps of them - just sitting around the office or the bedroom, waiting to be read or reread. I guess it's just the nature of books -  thoughtful, educational, intuitive? - that lends a smart but candid air to any room where they sit randomly stacked upon each other in colorful, dusty towers. They are a design element in themselves - all the paper and cardboard and glue and dust jackets eclectically mingled with completely unmatching neighbors. Joan Didion, Jane Austen and a study of Christian end-times theology, making friends in a corner.

In an age of progressively less and less paper and more and more technology and apps and touch screens, there is something wonderfully librarian and tangible about scratchy pages and dark black ink that you can see and smell and touch in your own hands ... don't you think?