apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I have no problem with this as a concept and use it frequently...

...but the first photos show the piles of books completely overpowering that dinky lamp - the lamp either should be much larger or the piles of books need some serious scaling back.

And if you're going to stack books like this - one should at least get the books flipped so that the titles are right-side-up, and don't put thin little items like that car brochure(?) in the pile.

I don't like any book arrangement that makes grabbing a book a hassle. So intentional stacks are out. Feral stacks sprout up all over the place anyway.

Too many books is an ongoing problem that will never, ever end.

Oh well, there are worse vices. Like no books at all.

Henrietta : agreed!

I only stack books on the coffee table, the (rare) times it is cleaned of papers and junk. And only a few, and nice art books, to make people want to go through them while on the couch.
Otherwise stacking reminds me of my apartment before I cleared it out for the first time years ago : I had a stack of books used as a "table" because I didn't have enough shelves. A nightmare for taking them out, dusting, and even preserving them (the apartment is small and you always knocked into them, when you didn't simply make everything fall over while vacuuming). Of course I had only placed ugly uninteresting books I don't look at often so the visual result was bleah. Since I have an allergy to stacked books and love the old fashioned vertical storage.

^^ Agreed. I think this looks best with coffee-table type books. Not so much with used paperbacks.

Is Philly getting its own AT branch?!!! Color me excited!

yea - i can't say i am loving the stacked books concept. it makes it hard to get to books on anytype of regular basis, then the book stacks get all sloppy, and you start to stack paperbacks and magazines and before you know it - you gotta a stack of mess. ugh.

if you have too many books for your bookcase i would suggest - losing some of the books? donate to local public library, sell at used book store, or post and swap on paperbookswap.com. i have done them all - even sent a bunch of books to new orleans public library after katrina. no need to horde books - share them with others!

Dusting nightmare.

stacking books like this is really bad for the binding.
just sayin

I'd like to know more about the dressers in the first two photos. Any idea where they are from?

oh no... I'm fine with a few select books stacked, but not as a primary solution for storing books. that first picture just feels cluttered to me (and ditto regarding the titles; I just want to turn them all over). it might look interesting in a photo, but it would drive me crazy to live around.

I've done this, where i'm about 4 books over the limit of my book shelf. Or i'm using them at the moment as research for a project so they're handy. But dust does make shiny book covers a little less shiny even after dusting. I've even gone as far as to very carefully damp towel wipe it then dry it....but it still looks matte.

agree with most of the others, this stacking is not attractive and certainly a PIA to get a book out. you dont need a 1000 books stacked around for people to figure out you are an intellectual.

Who would store any book beyond a yellow pages or something on the floor under a bench? You are going to ruin the books. We own two short bookshelves that hold all of our books. We use a few old college text books on an end table (that sits about halfway behind a chair) to prop the lamp up with - and library books are stored on the shelf under our coffee table.

"...stack extra books on and under a bench. It's a great way to utilize a bench while it's not being used by a person needing a place to sit."

Oh god...

i tried this once. but since i actually read my books, it was completely impractical. it is not easy to get a book out. and when you pick up the top half of a stack to get to something in the middle, they books invariably slide around and you have to restack everything from scratch. needless to say, the libraries are on to something.

Henrietta? "Feral stacks" = for the win!

Please ... more info on those dressers in the first two pics!

I constantly have stacks of books around, for lack of space. I find it hard to locate books this way and also a bit of a nightmare for cleaning.
(also- not to be persnickety, but how is stacking books a design idea? It's a default everyone uses when they run out of room. Like piling coats on a bench...)

I use stacks as bookends.

Such angst from a tribe that is generally enthusiastic about the ultimate stack, the Sapien Bookcase!

It's clear from comments here (and in threads on purging/hording books) that AT folks have conflicting models about what books are for. We are united, however, in our snobbishness about how Those Other People Do It All Wrong. Do we really expect one-size-fits-all solutions? Can we, instead, take it as given that collectible and antique books need better preservation and care than popular fiction, coffee table books and working cookbooks? Let's acknowledge that the Books-As-Consumables folks need convenient parking space for temporary tenants more than permanent storage, while the Books-Are-Beautiful people are reconciled to dusting, or dust, just like the plant people and china collectors. Before the Sort-By-Subject folks demand satisfaction at dawn from the Sort-By-Size and Sort-By-Colour crews, let's recognize that ordering serves retrieval. If the writer needs to search by author but the artist remembers the font on the spine, we're going to benefit from different sorting styles.

The real culprit in all these photographs is not the bibliophile or clutterbug. Blame the stylists. These ideas aren't bad. They're just "drawn that way" (as Jessica Rabbit would say). In the real world, the first time I left the room, my friend Sherrie would turn all those books around so she could browse the titles; the 'cool things to do in this neighbourhood' books would migrate to the bedside table in the guest bedroom; and, every floor stack would be grounded on old phone books so the house rabbit would have something disposable to chew on.

As for accessing stacked books, it's the same as organizing anything else: the most frequently used books need to be easy to get to and the dangerous books need to be secured. My working thesaurus is always on top but, since the advent of spellcheckers and online dictionaries, my big dictionary has migrated to the bottom of the stack. My journals are in a filing cabinet and the 'how to draw the nude' texts are on a shelf above kiddie height.

Actually, I am an intellectual (academic, researcher, writer--I guess that qualifies me....) and, while I'm not trying to show off (certainly people coming to my house probably already know), I DO need and love my books. I've got about 50 spread out in my dining room right now mostly piled up on unused chairs, for a project I'm working on. And hundreds in boxes in my garage that I'll bring out when I can afford new bookshelves.

I don't find a short stack of books any harder to deal with than books on a shelf the traditional way. When they are placed vertically on shelves, the whole row tends to fall over when you take one out anyway which makes it just as much a pain as carefully removing a book from the bottom of a stack. Then there's the problem of trying to jam it back in...

This started out as a temporary solution when I moved (and discovered that my bookcases were 1/2" too tall for the room)... but I've grown to kind of like it. And it's NOT a problem to get at books - just slide them out without any difficulty.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rapm/3288040904/

hmmmm... 'to stack or not to stack and how to stack if stacking' seems a hot button issue 'round 'bout these parts so for fear of alienating one side or the other i'll just say:

HI KRISTEN!!! Glad to see a local. :-)