What's in Your Perfect Reading Nook?

Any of you ever have something and not realize how utterly wonderful it was until way too late?

I did. 

When I was little, I had the ultimate reading nook for a bed, and I didn't even know I should appreciate it until it was gone. After I graduated from my crib (a time from which I naturally have no memory), my bed was actually sort of built into the end of my bedroom. The room was very small, so it had a platform built into the end that was essentially the size of a twin bed. It had walls on three sides and I am pretty sure it even had curtains pulled back for extra ambience. (Or maybe my grown up mind made that up.) Anyway. It was so wonderful...this beautiful nook at the end of the room. I was far too young to appreciate it.

When I was in elementary school, my parents switched me to a different bedroom in our house and my former nook-laden bedroom became a storage room. When I reached junior high, Dad tore out the wall between the rooms and I had a delightfully long and skinny bedroom twice as big as any room I'd ever had before. 

The compromise Mom made with me in giving up her full storage room was that the nook at the end would be converted into a storage closet instead. 

I've never had a true reading nook since then, and that's okay, of course. I can read anywhere. (When I have time.) 

But that doesn't stop me from dreaming about one day having a little dedicated nook of the house for my reading corner. 

So of course, that makes me brainstorm about what makes the perfect reading nook. Is it the shelving? The seating? The lighting? All of it? 

I think for me, the perfect nook would be a tiny corner of a house, tucked out of the way where I could get lost in what I'm reading. It would have the most comfortable chair where I could sink down deep and stay for hours. And a fuzzy blanket. It would have a window where natural light could flood in by day, but the softest lamp for when night fell and the stories carried on.

It would have plants, of course, because I newly love them so. 

And while I've always said I'd love a Beauty and the Beast style library with floor to ceiling shelves and a rolling ladder, I think the perfect reading nook would have just a few shelves. Just a few with the very best of the best reserved for them. 

Just a little corner. A little hideaway. That would be my perfect reading nook. 

What about you?