Bookshelf Porn [new site]
‘A room without books is like a body without a soul.’ ~ Marcus Cicero
How can someone possibly call their desired dream home a dream home if it doesn’t cater for books?! I keep my books in boxes but only because I don’t have an adequate shelf worthy of their display. The possibilities to express a love and respect for books just blows my mind. Who knew bookshelves could evoke such envy? Then again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I am beholding some gorgeous shelves: photos via bookshelfporn.com
The Baroque library Biblioteca Joanina (King John’s Library)
Prof. Richard Macksey’s Home Library, via John Hopkins University
A Bookshelf Headboard
Upstairs in the The Last Bookstore, Los Angeles
A Skylight Library
A studio apartment in Paris
A slide… As popular as e-books become, nothing will ever compare to reading a good book. To be able to hold an entire world in the palm of your hands and know the power of a deity has to fold back and forth through time with the delicate lives of people between their fingertips; to know someone’s deepest desires, hear their voice and share their secrets at your leisure, and the ability to feel someone elses troubles and admire their loves, is a quality I don’t believe can be fully translated to a digital device. Something is lost, not narratively speaking but in character of the book that only a book and all its parts can form — a unique haven for a unique world and all the voices that belong in it.
E-books just smoosh stories into a single, messy multiverse that is susceptible to cross contamination with illiterate nonsense. I’m not gaga over bookshelves, but books are something special.
Well put, Lisa. It’s funny to me to think that we show better care for books than we show for each other. If anyone is interested; the best bookshop I’ve stepped in has to be Hard to Find Secondhand Book Shop in Onehunga. It’s a book-lovers comfort zone:
🎭 
🙂 I agree, and I don’t even mind finding a second hand book with writing inside of its pages; just shows the book was loved enough to share and hold onto someone’s thoughts. Books are great, and I think the most special books are the ones that find you, when you’re not even looking. Thanks for sharing, Beck 😀
Ahhh I know what you mean. I have a fairly big book collective. Some people just don’t get it. I’m forever in op shops and second hand book stores going through piles looking for that gem. I love the feel of a well worn book the feeling I get not just from the story itself but from the history of the book, the people that read it before me, seeing the odd finger smudge here or a pinched page corner there.