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?).