Living with Books Book

Books do furnish a room"... or if left to their own devices, totally take the room over..

Most design books show a few books placed artfully in the corner of a huge display case, mixed in with the tchotchkes. Some even go so far to show a wall of perfectly matched hardbacks, to provide that oh-so-intellectual backdrop to the huge main space. This is all absolutely useless for those of us with a serious book addiction.

This is a design book for real-world bibliophiles. The beautiful photographs illustrate several attractive ideas for storing and displaying books in every room in the house - including the bathroom. The styles range for antique to super-modern, and from formal (beautiful mahogany bookcases with leather bound tomes) to casual (impromptu stacks on the staircase.) There are several really innovative solutions: the "bookworm" bookcase that floats books in the air, bookshelves hung from the ceiling, etc. For those of you - and you know who you are - that have a book fetish, I suppose this book qualifies as library porn.

For those brave enough to tackle building their own solutions, the book has a brief set of projects at the end; this is sufficient for those who just want to solve the problem at hand, but probably not enough to satisfy a serious do-it-yourselfer.