Daniel had always bought books faster than he read them.
He knew this. He was not embarrassed by it. There was a specific pleasure in owning a book that was waiting to be read in knowing it was there, on a shelf, patient, when the right moment came.
The problem was that the books were not on a shelf. They were in stacks on the floor, on the bedside table, on the windowsill. Two in the bathroom. One under the bed that he was fairly sure he'd already read, but couldn't verify without finding it.
He'd wanted a proper book wall for years. The kind that runs the whole length of a wall, floor to ceiling, that makes a room feel like it belongs to someone who takes reading seriously.
He started smaller than that. Three reclaimed timber shelves, staggered at different heights on the wall opposite the window. He chose a sanded and Raw oiled finish, something with depth that would work alongside the spines of the books rather than competing with them.
The books went up in order. Not alphabetically, not by colour, but by the way they'd come into his life. The ones from the university at the top. The ones from the decade that followed in the middle. The ones from the last few years within reach.
It wasn't a library. But it felt like one.
His wife said it made the room. Daniel said it made the books.
They were both right. They usually are.
