This Hollywood Hills home graced the cover of the 2012 December/January issue of House Beautiful and remains to be one of my favorite interiors. Behind the design is Mark D. Sikes who is one of my favorite figures in the design community and also happens to have a fantastic blog. I especially love the way he works with texture, whether it's with a velvet leopard pillow, rattan roman shade, woven jute rug or black lacquered walls, he then layers with a sentimental objet or stack of books. His designs give you a sense of ease and intrigue, all the while looking pulled together in an organic yet sophisticated fashion.

I am drawn to the bookcases that are inhabited with stacks of magazines that seem to look like prized literature. In my room at home back east, I have an antique shoe rack that houses hundreds of magazines I've collected over the years, I think it secretly drives my Mother insane.

As the Roman philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero has said, “A home without books is like a body without a soul.”