'Bookish New England life'

"The Bookworm'' (1850),  by Carl Spitzweg.

"I always wanted to grow up in a house full of books, English books, and I wanted the sort of fireplaces that worked, overstuffed chairs, that whole kind of fantasy of a bookish New England life. So the library gave me that; for the hours that I was there, I was surrounded by that atmosphere that I craved in my life.''

-- Jhumpa Lahiri (fiction writer of Bengali background who grew up in Rhode Island)