Books Do Furnish a Room

A delight to read with inspiring pictures. A bibliophile's dream...

Gorgeous photos of personal home libraries. It has a good mix of formal and informal. There are some really beautiful photos.

This is a very appealing coffee table book. The cover grabs your attention and it's very hard not to pick it up. It's full of photographs of people's houses and the innovative way that books are displayed. (My favorite was a collection that goes up a very high wall, which the owner accesses via a swing on a pulley). If you love books, it's a delight to look through it. There are also some interesting comments on the role that books play in our lives.However, I couldn't shake the feeling that the book was put together by someone who was interested in interior design but ultimately wasn't that interested in books. For example, there's a lovely picture of a shelving arrangement in a child's room - but there are only two books, barely visible, crammed among the toys. Another picture shows a bookshelf filled with white books that aren't even real books. It feels like the author thinks the most interesting thing about books is the color and shape of their spines. In most cases, the copy also adds next to nothing. For example, in the section on low lying bookshelves, we learn that the advantage they give you is that you still have wall space above - a startling revelation! I would have liked to find out more about the people whose houses we were looking at, or their reasons for organizing books in the ways that they did, but that's not covered.I am unashamedly nosy about people's bookshelves. I am the kind of person who will always check out your books when I come to your house, intrigued to know where our reading tastes align or differ, always hopeful of new discoveries. So I was disappointed that it was so difficult in many of the photographs to see what books people actually had - at least one photograph has even been reversed so all the book titles are back to front.There are other, similar books which are better.

While not a detailed "how-to," this book will give the casual home decorator or the professional designer great ideas for displaying books to their advantage while keeping them accessible.From ultra-modern to ramshackle to palatial, this book shows it all.There are stunning floor-to-ceiling bookcases designed right down to the inch, eccentric bathrooms with books next to the tub, beds with built-in shelves, kitchens overflowing with cook books, ingenious use of hallways, and an apartment where every square inch of wall space is covered with books.A vast array of book storage options are shown. The real eye opener for me was tables, particularly a custom room-length coffee table, which showcased a beautiful collection of art books while making them instantly available.The photos amply illustrate Geddes-Brown's assertion on the first page: books belong in every room in the house.

An author of books on gardens and former editor, Geddes-Brown has always had books as a part of her professional and personal life. Traveling widely throughout Europe, she finds how others who have had such professional and personal involvements with and attachments to books make them visible and accessible in varied traditional and imaginative ways so they are both a personal statement and ready resource.Interior designers, architects, antiques dealers, collectors, and others present diverse, sometimes idiosyncratic, but always functional and artful resolutions for holding their large collections. Bookshelves of different scales, shapes, and materials making the foundation of most of these are integrated into the use and decor of particular rooms. In some cases, entire walls are filled with books in bookcases, making an impressive array, but also serving as a design solution for a part of the room (in place of wallpaper for instance or of framed art). In other cases, a bookcase goes around a piece of furniture such as a chair or desk. A bookcase can also serve as a showcase for objets d'art and other virtu. Especially large book collections can be accommodated by bookcases along stairways or in hallways.One whimsical collection in a bookcase higher than two floors in a loft-like room has its owner (a designer) using a bosun's chair and pulley fastened to the main upper beam as a way to get to all of the books. Another unusual bookcase is tilted so it has a diamond shape instead of the usual rectangle making it and its books look like a work of modern art. Varying the lengths and heights of the sections of a bookcase is an easy way to make different geometrical patterns while still keeping a bookcase functional. Or books can even be stacked in spots on the floor or on a table as a statue or vase might otherwise fill such a spot.From ultramodern design of aluminum and plastic to antique bookcases and ones antiqued to hold old handsome leatherbound volumes, Geddes-Brown takes one through a variety of ideas for book people looking to do something special for their books, interior designers, and the like. Ones with any type of book collection will find appropriate ideas for keeping and displaying books.

I am a big fan of Leslie Geddes-Brown and this handsome tome did not disappoint. It looks good, it's not too big and not too heavy, and the content is wonderful - good photos, intelligent but not too intrusive or patronizing text, and plenty of inspiration for those lucky enough to have run out of space for their books, and can afford, ahem, to buy a whole new place and decorate it just for the books. This is definitely an aspirational offering, rather than a practical instructions manual. There are some good bits of advice but overall, if you're looking for workable ideas, you might be disappointed - not much to be learned from, for example, books stored in a luxurious bathroom (!) together with stuffed birds (!!), or in a huge country mansion, or in a vast Italian palazzo. And I definitely didn't fancy one idea featured, of having to hang from a swing and abseil to access books on unfeasibly high shelves... but maybe that's just me.If you want a bit of armchair escapism and are happy to just lose yourself in some beautiful photography, you'll like the many different, interesting interiors and the ways books can be used as ornaments in some highly original interior decoration schemes.

good book