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.