What's This Thing Called?

Here I am, starting a new blog after I made a quick, snap-decision to delete my old one.  I think the shine and the sparkle had worn off of the old one after three-and-a-half years.

I knew I wanted to start a new blog that focused more on reading and writing, with just a smattering of random life mixed in.  Something a little less personal than my old blog.  So, I just had to come up with a name for it.  Easy, right?

No.  Not when every one of the dozens of titles I thought of regarding books and libraries have already been taken.  So, I thought about it and it lead my brain to wonder and wander through my childhood.

Should I call it "Three Dollar Thumbelina" in honor of the very first book I ever purchased with my own money?  It was a beautiful, shiny, pink, pop-up book that you could tie together at the top with a little pink ribbon and it was like carousel of characters.  I picked it out at the book fair at school when I was in the first grade.  There was a green one, too, about Sleeping Beauty, equally beautiful but not PINK, which had already been claimed by a girl named Karen.

 I went home and asked my mother if I could spend my money on Thumbelina.  She talked to me about how three dollars was a lot of money.  And it was!  Especially considering that this was 1979 and my allowance at the time was 25-cents a week.  She gave me her permission to buy it and I was in book heaven! I wish I still had that pop-up book but I have the feeling that as a generous older child I gave it away to someone younger.  I have recently found it on Amazon for 1-cent, but I have the feeling if I order that copy it won't be so shiny and new.

But, in the end, I decided not to call it "Three Dollar Thumbelina" because it sounded kind of cheap and creepy and a little bit sleazy.

Then I thought about where I liked to read the most as a child and that clinched it for me.  I would read lying down on the 9-foot green velvet couch in my parents' living room, propped up on a big pillow.  During summers my mother would allow me to snuggle up there and read all I wanted, as long as I got up occasionally  to play badminton with my brother or go to the swimming pool or go play at a friend's house.

I love that couch.  They bought it when I was six months old along with the other matching velvet pieces and they still have it, almost 40 years later.  It is soft, it is comfortable, it is the perfect place to lie down and read.

Where's your favorite place to read?