Literary Trumps

As well as running Bookshelf and Shedworking regular readers know that I have also published various books over the last half dozen years, the last two on Bookshelves and Improbable Libraries. This year, instead of a book, it's a game - Literary Trumps. I am hoping to crowdfund this via the excellent book publisher Unbound which crowdfunds all its titles (you may have read the best-selling Letters of Note or the Booker short-listed The Wake).

The game is played along similar lines to other Trump games you will have played in your youth, only instead of classic cars or dragsters, Literary Trumps is all about writers, their quotability, their ouptut and their speed. Please do click on the links above for more information and do consider making a pledge to fund it - the whole thing will only happen if 500 people generously put their hands in their pockets.

Ernest Shackleton bookshelf in Antarctica

"It is now known that the explorer carried with him dictionaries, encyclopaedias and books chronicling other dangerous polar expeditions. He took established works by Dostoyevsky and Shelley - but also, explains Alasdair MacLeod from the RGS, newly published fiction by popular authors of the time."
BBC

Betty's Reading Room

A couple from Orkney have created an unusual memorial to friend who died unexpectedly. Betty's Reading Room has been created in a once derelict bothy in Tingwall in the Orkney Islands. Craig Mollison and Jane Spiers said they wanted to create a fitting tribute to their friend Betty Prictor.

BBC

Shopping for bookcases

Bookcases say as much about you as the books you read. So which style to choose? An interior designer offers some suggestions.
The New York Times

Albero bookcase

The bookcase comprises just a few ingeniously interconnected elements, which show Gianfranco Frattini's attention to the laws of statics and dynamics. It has four vertical struts and two rack and pinion poles at the two ends, all crafted from solid olive wood. The shelves, produced in MDF with olive essence veneer, can be positioned in the holes along the struts as desired with a minimum of eight and a maximum of 12 shelves. A special metal cylinder is attached to the ceiling to hold the bookcase in place. The Albero's frame is attached to this and the floor thanks to two adjustable metal ferrules that ensure its stability. The height of the bookcase can vary between 2.66 m to 3.26 m.
Poltrona Frau

Blooks: The Art of Books That Aren't

Book-objects designed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

About Blooks

Ebook sales falling

Ebook sales for the UK’s five biggest publishers fell in 2015, according to a new report in the Bookseller, collectively declining 2.4%, to 47.9m units. It is the drop in numbers of books sold in this medium for the “big five” since the digital age began... “For those who predicted the death of the physical book, and digital dominating the market by the end of this decade, the print and digital sales figures from the big five for 2015 might force a reassessment,” wrote the Bookseller’s features editor Tom Tivnan.

The Guardian

Giotto

Round bookcase made of lacquered white MDF and teak wood or zebrawood. This original round bookcase is obtained with the same technique that is employed in the creation of wooden drum shells for percussion instruments  that are made of wooden horizontal layers
Villa

Fishbone shelf

A modular shelf resembling herring fish bones that can be arranged in a variety of ways. The back panel is made of multi-layered plywood while the shelving surface is made from extremely thin curved sheet-metal.
Fancy.com

Mini mobile libraries in Seoul

The ‘mobile library’ project is part of a larger initiative by the Seoul Innovation Park, and the city of Seoul, South Korea to revitalize a site originally occupied by the ministry of food and drug safety. a number of social companies and startups have been gathered, and will continually work from the site to address various social issues in the city.
Designboom and Archiworkshop

Improbable Libraries on Australia's ABC

Mark Sutton and Zoe Norton Lodge love libraries. In fact, Mark’s parents met in a library and his mother is a former librarian. But when in history did the concept of a library first emerge? What were some of the most famous libraries from history? What are some of the most unusual libraries around the world? And what challenges assail the library in the modern day?
[I'm talking about unusual libraries around the world from around the 36:30 mark]
ABC

The Search for Tiny Libraries in New Zealand

Dotting the countryside of New Zealand are dozens of tiny libraries – freestanding buildings that serve as meeting places, resource centres and lending libraries for the smaller regions located between larger urban areas. While New Zealand’s national public library culture thrives, these unassuming structures, having survived regular floods, aging populations, and the rise of the Internet, are mostly alive and continue to provide books for local readers. 
BBC World Service

Antiquity

Antiquity is a homage to the historical icon Venus D’Arles... In full view, an intricate system of strategically placed mahogany shelves surround and veil the marble statue, allowing an interesting play with the seen and unseen. This wooden framework functions as a bookshelf that can hold eclectic items, but it also doubles as "scaffolding," paralleling the experience of a tourist visiting an antique sculpture under conservation.
Sebastian ErraZuriz

L Shelf

A single module, a piece of bentwood, the logical result of the meeting with a carpentry workshop specialized in bending wood.
Objet Optimisé

Bottleship

Ernest Race was invited by Jack Pritchard to redesign Egon Riss’s original Isokon Penguin Donkey and Bottleship in 1963. For his Bottleship Mark 2, Race developed a piece of similar dimensions to the Donkey but with a hinged lid under which glasses and bottles are stored creating a cross between a mini-bar and side table.
Isokonplus

Cuerda

Cuerda from Emmanuel Gonzalez Guzman on Vimeo.

Un poco aludiendo a las cuerdas de un ring de boxeo y la idea de una celosia, este rack sin puertas tradicionales deja ver su interior de forma simple con la cuerda elastica de protagonista, con esto buscaba hacer algo entretenido sin mayor complicación.
Emmanuel Gonzalez

Is there still any point collecting books?

"Books breathe as trees breathe. When all the books have gone our mental climate will have changed. It's a question whether we'll survive. Technology cannot replace a book. No matter that I can quickly find a digital version of a novel I'm looking for, I still fly into a rage when I discover I no longer have it, and remember who borrowed and didn't return it, five, 10, 20 years ago. For it is irreplaceable. It has my scribblings in it. The marginal expletives. The turned-down pages. The bus ticket or taxi receipt or even billet doux employed as a bookmark - not just the marginalia of an intellectual life but the detritus of the heart. And that you don't get on a Kindle, or a free e-book courtesy of Project Gutenberg. What you can't bend or throw or write on isn't, in the end, literature."

Howard Jacobson. More at BBC

Book Pedlar

A mobile bookstore on a Classic No. 33 Pashley cargo bicycle that allows for great books [have a close look at the stock...] to infiltrate the streets.
The National Design Collective

Story Pod

A book exchange and an urban marker. During the day, two of the walls pivot open like the covers of a book, welcoming people inside or to gather around the front. Visitors can take or leave something to read, or lounge quietly on the built-in seating

Atelier Kastelic Buffey

Oblique

Filip Janssens