A special 50th anniversary version of the Kik-Step stool has a moulded grip made of words from classic writers including Hemingway and Twain.

STAFF PICK | A step stool for bookworms – KansasCity.com.

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A step stool for bookworms

I’ve mentioned the Bookshelf blog at least once or twice before. It really is quite wonderful. Here are a couple of my favourites from there more recent postings. The blog is well worth a browse as there is a whole lot of fascinating book furniture there.

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A couple of interesting bookshelves.

I quite like this shelf. Obviously not the choice for storing a huge number of books, but I’m a big fan of bookshelves being art themselves.

[quadelle sent me to apartment therapy to see it]

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Spiral bookshelf

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

I was about to post about a couple of things I quite liked over Bookshelf, but then decided I should just give the whole blog a bit of a plug.

The blog Bookshelf as you might expect, features mainly bookshelves along with other assorted book related pieces. While some of them don’t appeal to me, I find many of them beautiful, clever, odd, or otherwise attention-grabbing.

The two that really caught my eye this week were the book clocks and the Pisa bookshelf. The Pisa bookshelf is one I was tempted to copy and make for myself but after consultation with Mrs BookBoy we decided it probably wouldn’t fit so well in our size house.

So pop over and have a look, of course I’ll keep posting the occasional link to the things that really grab me.

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More great stuff over at Bookshelf

Taking Ikea’s flat-pack philosophy to the next level, PLoP! is a shelving system that simply “plops” open after you open the packaging. When you move house. or no longer need it, you can “plop” it closed again, or recycle it as it’s made of corrugated board.

Oh, and you can keep your books on it in the mean time.

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Collapsible, recyclable bookshelves

On the one hand, I think this may just end up looking like a messy pile of books that manages to stand taller than the average messy pile of books.

On the other hand, I really really like it. 

See it here.

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Vertical bookshelf

Here’s a cute little bookshelf I saw over at The Blog on the Bookshelf. It actually looks small enough that it could be a desktop shelf if you wanted.

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Pack of dogs bookshelf

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.

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Bookshelves made from books