Corian cat and dog bookcase

Sejal Tiwari

Chocolate library

There’s a mixture of favourite classics and beautiful vintage books, along with whole bays dedicated to books shortlisted for prizes this year...They may have chocolate inside, but on the outside they have blurbs and barcodes, just like real books.
More details and how to make your own at Playing by the book

Bookselling in the 21st century: When your store is a photo op

The more that the book is venerated as a physical item, something that, unlike a screen, people want to hold and even smell, the more the bookstore turns into a temple. The physical space where books are kept, and where booksellers friendly and grumpy alike can provide guidance in the world of books, becomes more important.
More by Katie Orphan at Literary Hub

Double J bookcase and lamp

A bookcase and floor lamp. The weight of the books helps the lamp to bend in a manner so accentuated to support the LED panel placed at the end.
Amitrani

BooKaos bookshelves

Modular and flexible bookshelf composed of vertical rails and horizontal elements that can be attanged to form shelves, containers, bookholders.
Mauro del Santo

How real books have trumped ebooks

Books have always had a fetishistic quality to them, with their dusty secretiveness. Now, though, it feels like we’re living through a special moment in the history of book design and beautiful books are everywhere. Take George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo with its marmoreal endpapers or Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads, with its cover inspired by mosaic from the Imam mosque at Isfahan; Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, its sumptuous jacket inspired by the tiles of William Morris; 4th Estate’s gorgeous repackaging of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s backlist, based on vibrant African headwrap patterns; the glimmering Penguin Hardcover Classics reissue of the works of F Scott Fitzgerald, or its clothbound editions of Austen, Brontë and Dickens. It’s hard to know whether to read these books or caress them.
Read more at The Guardian

A Book of Book Lists: A Bibliophile's Compendium

If you liked my books 'Bookshelf' (inspired by this site) and 'Improbable Libraries' (ditto), then I think you will enjoy my next one too. A Book of Book Lists will be published by The British Library in October and is now available for pre-order (if you're in the US then this is the link for information) and will also be available from your local independent bookseller. I know it's a little early for Christmas shopping but...

Alterna bookcase

Projeto de estante para livros com linguagem contemporânea.
Gabriela Martins

Reading snug shed

Rebecca Jones’ reading snug is the winning shed, as chosen by design guru, Kevin McCloud, at the Grand Designs Live, Grand Shed Project in London. The Grand Shed Project challenged five of the UK’s top interior and garden designers to transform our 10ft x 8ft Tradesman Storage Sheds into stylish garden retreats to showcase how the shed can become an extension of the home.
Waltons

Bricks bookcase

A free standing metal bookcase and room divider.
Material: 8 mm bar steel
Dimensions version 1: h 165 x w 100 x d 36 cm
Dimensions version 2: h 198 x w 45 x d 36 cm
Gerard de Hoop

The Gate bookshelf

Painted wood. Available in black, white or brown
zakharchitects

'Screen fatigue' sees UK ebook sales plunge 17% as readers return to print

Britons are abandoning the ebook at an alarming rate with sales of consumer titles down almost a fifth last year, as “screen fatigue” helped fuel a five-year high in printed book sales. Sales of consumer ebooks plunged 17% to £204m last year, the lowest level since 2011 – the year the ebook craze took off as Jeff Bezos’ market-dominating Amazon Kindle took the UK by storm. It is the second year running that sales of consumer ebooks – the biggest segment of the £538m ebook market, which fell 3% last year – have slumped as commuters, holidaymakers and leisure readers shelve digital editions in favour of good old fashioned print novels.
The Guardian (and also here)

How to make your bookshelves beautiful

Whether you have few, or many books in your possession, the real trick is to arrange them in a way that is visually appealing as their contents. A tour of the most beautiful and beguiling bookcases to inspire your library-in-the-making.
More at Vogue

Oddly bookshelf

This project started with the idea that household items such as furniture would be able to add energy to many people if they were designed to function in a new structure, beyond the static and tedious vertical and horizontal structure. At first, the position of the ball is variable according to the gradient. But when you put the book on the Oddly, the center of gravity is shifted to the right. And at this time, the ball rolls down to hold the book as a book stopper.

Materials: Brass & Black Walnut Wood

Youngmin Kang

ODDLY from Youngmin Kang on Vimeo.

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Franz Kafka Society Center's rotating bookcase

All new partitioning in the building, even when carving out spaces for restrooms and a kitchenette, is created exclusively by book shelves. In one half of the building these bookshelves appear in white (offices) and the other half is filled with black bookshelves (entry hall). Coming from the central corridor one only sees black bookshelves and when coming from the offices one encounters white bookshelves. A 360-degree rotating door between the corridor and the director’s offices, black on one side and white on the other, reverses white to black.
Marcela Steinbachová (Skupina) and Steven Holl Architects 

Section bookcae

Bookcase with the possibility of transformation.
Zakharcitects

Borges's Library of Babel in Sketchup

I was thinking about the Borges story The Library of Babel and I got to wondering whether anyone had done any decent renderings of it.
Full story at JWZ  via Boing Boing

Historic Book Odour Wheel: The smell of books

The historic book odour wheel is a new tool that combines the chemical and sensory aspects of the odour experience and can be considered a preliminary piece in an archival method for heritage smells. It has the potential to be used as a diagnostic tool by conservators, informing on the condition of the object through its olfactory profile. In terms of visitor experience and interpretation, the olfactory experience in museums, both as a communication strategy and as an art form, could contribute to improved learning, to a more personal connection to the exhibits and an increased overall enjoyment.
More at Heritage Science Journal,  by Cecilia Bembibre and Matija Strlič

Pictured above, odour wheel of historic book containing general aroma categories, sensory descriptors and chemical information on the smells as sampled (colours are arbitrary)

“Chocolate”, “cocoa’” or “chocolatey” were the most frequent words used to describe the smell of a copy of French writer Bernard Gasset’s 1928 novel Les Chardons du Baragan, followed by “coffee”, “old”, “wood” and “burnt”.
More at The Guardian

Charles Dickens’s reading desk

"Distinct from any podium or lectern, Dickens had this reading desk specially crafted to fit his needs on stage. First among these alterations was Dickens's request that the desk be constructed as an open box, without side walls obstructing the audience’s full view of the speaker. This innovation would have been necessary for one of Dickens’s live readings, as he relied heavily on full-body gestures and movement in order to bring his beloved characters to life."
More at Charles Dickens Museum

Concave bookcase

This inspired piece by Simon Pengelly is a response to our need for bookcases to house a plethora of items that differ vastly in shape and size. It is produced in two halves and can be used as such or joined as one whole piece. Made with solid oak. Available also in walnut.
Joined and Jointed and Simon Pengelly