the Little White Bat: Reading is fun!.

Post from: reading hacks

Reading is fun!

Some beautiful examples of paper art over at Smashing Magazine. Not all of them are specifically book related, but enough are to ensure the link passes ReadingHack’s stringent book related selection criteria.

The Beauty of Paper Art – Smashing Magazine.

Post from: reading hacks

The Beauty of Paper Art

Nicely themed cafe at New York’s McNally Jackson Books.

[via Super Relax]

Post from: reading hacks

Book themed cafe

Another great artistic way to recycle books. The art is by Lisa Occhipinti, I read about it at Design Nova which was pointed out to me by Vetti (so long ago that she may well have forgotten about it).

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Book mobile

A few years ago I visited the Seattle Public Library and was struck by this display in the children’s library making the most of different coloured spines on the books (photo by Quadelle).

Read a rainbow at Seattle Public Library.

Every now and then I get the urge to run a similar display in my library. I tend to get blank looks or frowns when I mention it. It crossed my mind again the other day and I remembered a link gizo had sent me some time ago. It is a beautiful example of books organised by colour by flickr user chotda.

Flickr user chotda's beautiful arrangement.

Finding myself more and more excited by the idea, I did a tiny bit of digging and found a reasonably in depth treatment of the topic over at The Design Observer and another discussion at Colour Lovers. Looking a little bit closer there is even a whole flickr group devoted to the subject.

How do you organise your books? Has anyone else in Reading Hacks land taken this approach with their home (or work) library?

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Read a rainbow: arranging books by colour

A few bits & pieces from around the traps…

The Book Design Review has a list of favourite book covers of 2008, including one that nearly gave me vertigo:

Book Patrol has a post about some fascinating book-related art by Marina Camargo.

The appropriately named Bookshelf blog continues to post a fascinating collection of interesting bookshelves. This one caught my eye today. Probably not quite to my taste in terms of style, but I kind of liked the function.

Last but not least, DailyWritingTips attempt to cheer up rejected authors by listing how many times some famous books were rejected.

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Assorted linkage

Vetti sent me a link to Nina Katchadourian’s sorted books work. They are essentially piles or clusters of books arranged so the titles can be read to make a story, poem, or perhaps satirical comment on the nature and meaning of life. Very clever.

It made me want to grab some books and try my hand at creating something. Most of my books are still in boxes after our termite-induced furniture shuffle, but among the library books on my shelf now are “The game”, “The indigo girls”, “Skin”, “Juicy writing”, “Baby love”, “Bog child”, and “Hazel’s phantasmagoria”. I feel like there’s something there, but I’m not sure if I want to find it.

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Sorted books

I have a bit of a track record of getting excited by stuff made from old books.

So why stop now? Go look here.

[via josh mings]

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Surprise! More recycled book art

Vetti pointed me in the direction of these cute vases made from old books by Laura Cahill. In case you are wondering, the books are cut to shape on a bandsaw then wrapped around a test tube.

Amongst the comments on that page was a link to this table, made by Richard Hutten.

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More stuff made from books – vases and a table this time

Looking for somewhere unique to store you beloved books? There is quite a range of interesting bookshelves out there and one of the more interesting ideas I have come across are the recycled bookshelves made by Jim Rosenau at This Into That.

His shelves are actually made of old books. You can buy a shelf that has already been made (off the shelf?), or request something specific. You can even have one made with books that you provide.

I happen to think they’re quite beautiful works of art. Whether you would put one in your home may depend on your decor, but if you want a bookshelf that is one of a kind and emphasizes it’s bookish nature, then this might be the shelf style for you.

Another thing, every time I look at these shelves I have the urge to try to build some myself. However, I’m sure making something that looks good and doesn’t fall apart is going to be far more difficult than I would like it to be. Maybe I’ll grab a couple of old books and play around in the shed during my next holidays.

Post from: reading hacks

Bookshelves made from books