The books scattered about included Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment," some poetry and a volume on the interpretation of dreams.
And the painting was masterful, too, from what I could see of it by dim lamps and firelight, amid books scattered all over the floor. . . .
For two decades Mr. Daniel's wife, Kendra, an art dealer, has been tracking down and selling the books' scattered paintings and drawings.
Residents treading through the ruins of the building found torn and burnt pages of the holy books scattered across the rubble.
Funny props elevate a few of the images, although the humor may not always be intentional: A poster of kittens hovers over two vampish ladies, and art books scattered here and there try, rather transparently, to disguise more prurient interests.
Their front door is open, the coffee table shattered, books scattered, and Amy, a trust fund New Yorker who has been miserable since Nick dragged her to his Missouri home town to care for his dying mother, is gone.
Over the years, the store has grown into a medley of stacked books, scattered toys, vintage records, and cultural debris, all of it floating in an apparent chaos intelligible only to the store's enigmatic owner.
There is an eclectic collection of books scattered around his office, from Prehistoric Animals of Australia and New Guinea to the English-Tibetan Dictionary, a tome on Scots dialect, a history of clocks and watches and an exploration of London's Victorian sewers.
It is tempting to imagine him at his desk then, pen in hand, books scattered around him, and candle flickering, but in fact he never wrote or read after the sun set — a habit he recommended to his readers, saying that with books "the soul disports itself, but the body, whose care I have not forgotten, remains inactive, and grows weary and sad".
I'd go home, lie in bed with the books scattered around me and luxuriate in the possibility of disappearing into different worlds, spending time with characters who mostly behaved as I wanted and expected them to and even if they didn't, the pages could be closed, the book abandoned.
My books scattered further.
