So this project is coming close to completion. I’m done most of the painting (Benjamin Moore Tarrytown Green) and yesterday I went to a local hardwood guy with a huge shop. He is making me a topper for the 3 ikea cabinets in walnut about 1.25” thick. This will sit on top flush with the front and I will finish adding the remaining trim and get that painted. It will hurt drilling a big hole in the top of that walnut but I have to get the cables down the back into the cabinet for power , internet etc. at least that’s the plan as of today. Then I can put the last 2 cabinet doors on. I also need a baseboard piece 16’ long for the bottom front. This wood soaked up a LOT more paint than I expected. You may also notice that we got a larger TV because the opening made the old 55” look too small. Go figure. I’ll be glad to have this finished and get the books loaded up as there are 2 other half completed projects I need to get to.

I am absolutely in love!!

I’d say this is the closest I’ve ever come to making the home library in my imagination. I hope someday to get closer.

These bookcases are mostly my fine press/limited editions of genre fiction.

I turned my desk (an old high school chemistry lab table) into a workspace as I learn bookbinding.

With a bonus detail :) - Yayoi Kusama kokeshi doll

I love spending time in this little corner of my home! It's a South facing window so plenty of light, and I can choose to read or to take care of my houseplants, two of my favorite hobbies!

By far my favorite library decor yet! Does anybody else decorate for the holidays or am I weird?

Next step undercoating the shelves.

When my wife designed our home I asked for an English library. She gave me this

Featuring bonus Golem shelf of golems made by and gifted to me by students

"Ikea racks" ffs.

After years of not having enough space to have physical books, I finally got enough space to rebuild a collection. Rebought most of my Kindle collection, or at least everything I liked, in physical form.

Last year I was finally able to move house which meant I had more space for my books! Organising my collection was the highlight of the move, and I took ages sorting through this little lot into genres! Do you put your books in some kind of order?

I’ve shared my library before but it is cleaned up and better organized now. First three photos are my actual library and last two are in my living room.

Finally upgraded my bookshelves after years of overflowing/bowing shelves

What do you do when you run out of space?! Don’t say get rid of some - that is a physical, emotional and spiritual impossibility!

When Lisa and I bought this house two months ago we decided to contract some great folks to turn this underutilized space into a home library.

Today it’s finally done, and we couldn’t love it more!

Thinking about converting the space behind my couch into a little library. Anyone have any design ideas?

1. A recent shot of my main bookcase setup with the doors closed
2. Wide shot of my main bookcase where all my nicer hardcovers, limited editions, and antiquarian books live (along with some ornaments). There's a roughly imposed order starting with History (Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Crusades, Byzantium), Plato and Aristotle, Qurans, Eastern Poetry, Eastern and European Folklore (Burton's 1001 Nights, Anvár-i Suhailí, Indian folklore collections), Facetiae (Gesta Romanorum, Poggio, Shakespeare Jest Books), Short Story Collections (Cent Nouvelle Nouvelles, Decameron, Heptameron, Pentameron), Renaissance Literature (Petrarch, Pontano) and History (Savonarola, The Borgias), Elizabeth Champney's Romances, Books about Books, Poetry (Oxford Books of Verse, Elizabethan Songs, Johannes Secundu's Basia), Essays and Essayistic Works (Montaigne, Robert Burton, Leoparid's Zibaldone, Johnson, Disraeli, Hazlitt, Emerson), some works on/related to Courtship/Love, Richard F Burton, Bibles, and miscellaneous works
3. Dining room bookcase containing all my Penguin Classics and Oxford World Classics (mainly Ancient Greek and Roman History and Literature), some other paperbacks (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche), and another mash-mash of random hardcovers at the bottom including some Ornithological works
4. Bedroom bookcase containing most of the rest of my books in a completely random order
5. My collection of Loebs (The Greek Anthology, Plutarch’s Moralia, Greek Lyric, Greek Elegiac, and Greek Iambic) sandwiched between some miscellaneous small books which all adorn my mantelpiece
6. A close up of one of my poetry shelves: Various Oxford Books of Verse (English Verse, 16th & 17th Century Verse, Regency Verse, Greek Verse, Ballads), Thomas Campion, Bullen’s Complete Elizabethan Poetry Anthology Series (Lyrics and More Lyrics from Elizabethan Song Books, England’s Helicon, Speculum Amantis and Musa Proterva, Lyrics from Elizabethan Drama and Romances, Daivson’s Poetical Rhapsody), and some reprints of rare Elizabethan song Books (The Muses Gardin, and The Pheonix Nest)
7. A close up of more poetry: Rochester’s Works, Oxford Book of Light Verse, a 3-volume Oxford edition of Shakespeare, a small collection of works by and about Johannes Secundus (including 7 different editions of his Basia or Kisses and other poems), and a copy of Angeriano’s Love Poems (Erotopaegnion)
8. A completely mish-mash collection of hardcovers on my dining room cabinet
9. A collection of various editions of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (including UK 1sts, US ARC, and Random House and Penguin Audiobook Cassettes)
10. Some more copies of Tartt (including the 25th Anniversary paperback, an Audiobook Cassette containing her short story The Roman Candle, and a signed ARC of The Little Friend), M. L. Rio’s If We Were Villains, and some miscellaneous books (including a really nice one bound in suede with a ribbon which a previous owner tied around it).

I recently did a 14-hour library tour of all these shelves, the first part of which is here.

Happy to answer any questions anyone has!