Houses, Part One

Lately, everything in my life has been subordinated to the rituals of new-house-hunting. The hubby and I have researched houses; looked at houses; consulted multiple professionals about houses; talked about houses; argued about houses; mooned over houses; gotten excited, disappointed, and totally meh about houses; gotten sick of houses and then enthused about houses all over again; all this and more, and all in the last week.

Obsession is, after all, the soul of...something, I'm sure. 

This is an illustration of Edgewood by Peter Milton for the Incunabula edition of John Crowley's classic Little, Big. This became one of my favorite books of all time before I even finished it, and I've reread it a dozen times since. Here's a good article on this book and Crowley in general on FPL Reads, though there are countless others, some of a serious literary bent; Harold Bloom called this book a "neglected masterpiece."

Our new house will probably not look like this, nor exist simultaneously in multiple dimensions.

(concept art for Meduseld by Leading Light Design)

As far as famous houses go, Heorot is also one of my favorites. Heorot is the Danish mead hall of king Hrothgar, patron of good old Beowulf. 

(Here's a link to an Old English version from Poetry Foundation. Read it aloud.) 

Heorot was the ideal behind Meduseld, Tolkien's central symbol of the Rohirrim and their ruling family. 

I doubt we'll get to live in an AngloSaxon mead hall either, though. There are probably zoning laws pertaining to quaffing and wenching.

I'd be okay with The Burrow, especially if they throw in the teleporting fireplace. 

The Addams Family mansion  would be fine too.

Here's an illustration panel by illustration student Jasmine Lee, found here at her development blog. It's the Professor's House from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. 

"It was the sort of house that you never seem to come to the end of, and it was full of unexpected places. The first few doors they tried led only into spare bedrooms, as everyone had expected that they would; but soon they came to a very long room full of pictures and there they found a suit of armor; and after that was a room all hung with green, with a harp in one corner; and then came three steps down and five steps up, and then a kind of little upstairs hall and a door that led out onto a balcony, and then a whole series of rooms that led into each other and were lined with books--most of them very old books and some bigger than a Bible in a church." --Chapter One, Lucy Looks Into a Wardrobe