Books Really Do Furnish A Room

Hooray for a book about books! A hefty and aesthetically pleasing coffee table tome at that. And one with plenty of photography from all around the world, through all and sundry gloriously large and some quite cozy living arrangements. Room by room, we sally forth into houses, lofts and flats, so too learning about the varied sorts of libraries – be they formal or informal, designs with books in mind and place and making the most of the space.

I read through the text in one sitting, stopping only to gaze at the admirable arrangements and assortments of collections of architects, artists, authors, designers like Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Louboutin, as well as varied individuals and couples. The photos are lovely indications of the very many ways we could possibly store vast volumes of knowledge, entertainment and diversion. Though we might not yet own hundreds upon thousands of custom bound, antique volumes as seen in some of the ancestral homes, it is still great fun to think of how we may arrange, design and re-arrange our own personal empire of edification and education.

It is a wondrous world to look into the lives of others and see how they have incorporated reading material into their lives, using elements of design to create a style distinct to the area; be it a room in an old farm house, a kitchen in Barbados or the bathroom of a book publisher. Weighing in at over two pounds, it does work very well indeed as a tome on a table, perhaps browsed through by family, friends and fellow bibliophiles who can pontificate for long periods on the ideas such lovely words and images do inspire.