Some men bring home flowers; my husband brings home books.

Please don’t get me wrong. I really do like flowers and the way they look and smell, warming up the house, but my husband knows that I like books even more. He knows how much I love to read and how much I love to be surrounded by books.

I am a lucky girl.

To me, there is no more thoughtful or meaningful bouquet* that he could give than when he comes home with a new book, one that he picked up off of a shelf or ordered online just because he thought I would enjoy reading it.

Before we met, we each had our own collection of books. Now that we are married, so is our book collection.

Each time he brings me a new book, or we find one together, the book represents something we are building together, something that started as two separate entities and is now one.

Whether hardcover or paperback, a brand-new bestseller or a used bookstore-find, each of those bouquets are all beautiful to me, and they brighten up our home more than any bunch of flowers could.

~Melissa

*When we really think about the definition and the origin of the word — how it comes form Old French meaning a “clump of trees” and how it represents something that is to be ceremonial or presented as a gift — isn’t a bouquet, after all, really the perfect way, literally and figuratively, to describe a book?