Why My Bedside Tables Are Full Of Books

I often post photos of my bedside tables on Twitter (@KarenLNHollis) because I love looking at people’s book collections and enjoy the conversations that follow – Ooh read that one first! Oh I have a lot of those books too! My TBR is bigger/smaller/on the Kindle. Love chatting bookish things with bookish people.

But I LOVE my bedside table book piles, I really do. They’re not an eyesore to me or an accident waiting to happen (fingers crossed! But what a way to go!). They’re my comfort blanket. Let me explain…

Three years ago, I split up with my ex. Basically he was spending all the time down the pub, so one night, I went there at 2am and told him to come home. He was humiliated in front of his mates! (Awww, bless him.) Well, he’s a stubborn bugger and wasn’t impressed with that. The next day, he drove me and our son to my mum’s house in Lincoln and we’ve been there ever since.

Now this isn’t about our relationship, it’s about books. We moved here with just a car load of essentials (with only a few hours warning) so I just brought one book, the book I was reading – The Perfectly Imperfect Woman by Milly Johnson.

I have since explained to Milly how important this book was to me. My whole life (and that of my son!) had been turned upside down. The only constant was this gorgeous book which really helped to get me through the worst of times.

A couple of months after settling in to my mum’s house, I found the nearest two charity shops and bought a load of novels, which I put on my bedside table. It was starting a feel a bit more like home.

Since then, I have had my books from my “old life” returned to me. The three of us had over 1000 books between us then. But most of those are in Mum’s garage and pretty much all the books in the house are ones I have bought in the last three years.

The bookcases here are full and the piles on my bedside tables are far too high and numerous, as you can see… (Enjoy the photos below!)

But, books make me happy. I know I’ll never run out of something to read. You know the way you always want to carry a book in your bag, just in case you’ve got ten minutes to fill… or you make sure you’ve got enough books for your week’s holiday… Yes, it’s like that.

So it may be a bit weird, or a bit obsessive, or whatever. But it makes sense to me and let’s face it, these books don’t desert me for the pub or chuck me out after eight years!