Sunday Musings: Where Do You Do Your Best Reading & Writing?

(c) David Allen Sibley, 2003

I love sitting at my desk and reading my books, catching up on your blog postings, or just doing a little writing myself. Sometimes though, something catches my eye and I find myself just relaxing and looking out the window and watching all of my little feathered or fur-covered friends cavorting about our backyard. I especially love the spring and fall seasons when migrating birds stop and investigate my yard with its trees, bushes, and flowers. For example, right now I have dozens of yellow-rumped warblers (Dendroica coronata) and western bluebirds (Sialia mexicana) moving through on their way south. They bathe in the little pools of water in the wells surrounding my trees; and they hop about looking for insects and seeds in the gardens and lawn. In a word--they are just beautiful, and I could watch them for hours.  I've always been an avid birder, and keep a battered copy of David Sibley's Field Guide to Birds of Western North America (2003) within reach on my bookshelf.

I like my workspace a lot (see photo at left).  It is very comfortable, and quite conducive to reading and thinking.  I have about one-third of my books near my desk in a large wall-sized bookcase which is really convenient (photo at lower-left).  For the rest of my books, I have to go into my wife's office where I have several large floor-to-ceiling bookcases (Thank you, IKEA!).  On the shelves next to my desk I keep my favorite collections of poetry, literature and poetry anthologies, style manuals, atlases, dictionary, thesaurus, and writing notebooks.  Even though I could carry my laptop around from room-to-room, I generally don't.  I enjoy the discipline of sitting at my desk when I write and/or read; not to mention that it is also an ergonomically comfortable environment to work in.

I think my most favorite time to be at my desk is early on a Sunday morning.  I love sitting at my desk with a nice steaming cup of coffee and watching the sun rising.  There's something about those first golden beams of low-angled morning sunlight streaming through the window across my desk that just starts the day off ever so nicely!  So, how about you--where do you like to read and write?  Do you have a nice little area that is all your own?