Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Decorating with books



Find it at Abebooks. That one's a classic, but decorating with books is popular - take a look at this Google query.

I love the look of books (almost) as much as for their content, but does this seem a little silly?

"Instead of tucking them in a cabinet, you can also place a neat stack on a table with a vase and some flowers. Or place a stack of books in the same color, held together with some rope, in a corner."

In a corner? with some rope? I guess I'll have to read this book, too.

A reviewer at Amazon had a slightly different reaction than me:

A child could have "written" this book, February 27, 2007
Photo book featuring home libraries and - shock - books stacked throughout homes! Five year olds decorate like this when you tell them to put their books away. No original ideas or actual creativity to be found. There are other books on this subject, search Amazon for them. I suggest "Living with Books" by Alan Powers.

I like to imagine that in her house children regularly truss up stacks of books with rope. Anyway, then I looked at Living with Books and, sure, it looks nice. But the title almost makes it sound like... a challenge, a hardship, a condition to be managed. And they're (I think) just talking about the aesthetic side, not the identifying and finding side, of living with books (classification and information retrieval in library school terms?).

2 comments:

caroline said...

I enjoy the culture and aesthetics of book. Your blog is lovely!

MONIQUE FLACCAVENTO said...

Hi Lola

You've done a fantastic job of decorating your blog with books!

On the topic of decorating with books...
I happened to be watching Lynda Reeves (House & Home) on t.v. a while back (avoiding essay writing, as usual) and she wasn't really sure what to do with all of the books on her bookcases because they no longer fit the "look" she wanted... they were too colourful. Yipes! To make matters worse, her 2 designers agreed, and proceeded to wrap all of her books in white paper. Presto! No more colour! All matching, unidentifiable white objects (of the same size, no less) lined up on her bookcases.