On Styling Bookcases

A well-known design firm on the Island recently offered a workshop on tips and tricks for styling your bookcases.  I came close to signing up because those designers are good.  But I didn’t.

I guess it’s my age and my up-bringing but I still think bookcases should hold books.  Period.  Books jammed in upside-down, sideways, joyfully mis-arranged and, most importantly, having been read.  Every last one of them.  At least once.

So when I walk by ours….and I do that often since one entire wall of our living room is a bookcase….I stop and remember all the good times we had together.  The places we went; the people we met; the things we saw.

There isn’t room for anything pretty on those shelves.  And if I put something pretty in there, a book would have to be sacrificed and I’m not going there.

I still think that “styled bookcases” is an oxymoron.  I have, however, been noticing that most bookcases these days are indeed artistically and decoratively styled.  They hold pictures, and vases and, well, stylish things.

According to the blurb in our paper, the book-styling class was going to tell me that “bookshelves are regarded as vehicles for collections, treasured items and keepsakes.”

I already knew that, as it turns out, because that’s exactly how I feel about all our hundreds of books, carelessly stacked in their very own bookcases.  Stylish, or not.