Status Updates From Books Do Furnish a Room

Love love love the photographs of Richards Howard's book-filled apartment in New York. An extreme bibliophile's lair. Every wall is filled with book crammed shelves.

There should be a distinction between the books suitable for a guest bedroom and those for your own lair. Guests should be offered a mixture of dates and styles, with an emphasis on short reads (so they don't take the books home). The shelves could be small in number, so as not to be too threatening , and the volumes themselves just a bit dog ear-eared and well read.

A couple of great photos of the designer and builder Sally Trout's amazing home library. She build it by enclosing bookshelves within the central staircase of her home. She reaches the books via a bosun's chair that is fastened to a chain hoist, hung from the ceiling above. (Or less dramatically she can use the stairs)

They are mementoes of previous readers whose libraries have been dispersed for the benefit of others.

But it's a sad world where the intrinsic value of a book is more important than what is has to say. Although I would never scribble notes in the margins of books (however tempted I am as a proof-reader), I do value the marginal notes of others: the dedications and birthday greetings on the fly-leaf, and the occasional shopping list, newspaper article or pressed flower that drops from the pages of a second-hand book.