Top Ten Things On My Bookish Bucket List

Hosted by the Broke and Bookish the topic for March 25: Top Ten Things On My Bookish Bucket List (could be blogging related, book related etc. -- meeting authors, reading x many books per year, finishing a daunting book, etc.)

Oooooo!  I am going to make a totally unrealistic bucket list because I am having a weird day and need some fun.

1) One day I want to have enough bookshelves for my books - preferably in the form of a home library, but more likely in the form of a library home (i.e. books in every room in the house - which is what we have now, but it isn't nearly as pretty).

My daughter and I both like this one  ...

Library at Skywalker Ranch, a residence of director and producer George Lucas. Source (Bookriot)

Oops - my daughter just discovered this one ...  (I think she likes the window seat and the gilding).

This luxury home library is in the Morgan Estate, a house in Los Altos Hills, CA, which was built in in 1914 and is on the market for $27,000,000. The library boasts mahogany shelves, fabric-lined walls and a hidden wall-mounted television. http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/12335-Stonebrook-Ct-Los-Altos-Hills-CA-94022/2141831944_zpid/

2) Alright, I guess I need to toss in a couple of realistic ones. Some day I hope to have my library cataloged and organized in some fashion. 

3) I want to be able to travel to places that I have only read about in books! Of course I want those places to be safe for me to travel too, sigh.  Egypt, Petra, Machu Picchu, Victoria Falls, McMurdo Station the list goes on and on and on ...

Petra (Arabic: البتراء, Al-Batrāʾ, Ancient Greek Πέτρα) is an ancient city in the southern Jordan famous for its rock-cut architecture and water conduit system. Petra is also called Rose City for the color of the stone from which it is carved.

4) I could also visit famous bookstores like Shakespeare & Company, Paris, France; Librería El Ateneo Grand Splendid, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Hatchards, London, UK and, closer to home, the Strand Book Store, New York City, USA.

5) Publish a second book, maybe even a third or fourth. That would be good.  (Yes, this one is for real, but seems almost as extreme as traveling to Petra at the moment.)

6) Visit the Library of Congress - as well as other famous libraries. I have always wanted to visit the Bodleian Library, the Beinecke at Yale ... again this could get to be a very long list.

7) See a Shakespeare play at the Globe Theater -

8) I guess I will get a little more realistic now - I would like to read Chaucer - I was going to take a Chaucer course with a professor I very much liked but when his wife didn't get tenure (she mostly likely should have, the institution was notorious for not giving women tenure) he decided to pack up and go to a new place where she had a chance at tenure.  I still have my Riverside Chaucer in a box waiting for the day that I have the time and energy to tackling it on my own.

9) Finish reading the Vulgate Cycle - I made it through three and have the last two to go. Herm-net almost did me in - Lancelot could travel a day in any direction and find a hermit who a) already knew everything that Lancelot told to the other hermits and b) have some profound advice about what to do now. The 'hermits' had a better communication network then we do today.

10) I could get silly again and say that I want to finish every book on my TBR list - but that is functionally equivalent to asking for immortality.  Instead I want to make a list of 'important' books that I hope to get through during my lifetime.