Alrighty. I read. A lot. But once I read a book, I almost never read it again. Though these libraries are lovely, I do wonder how practical they are, and who dusts them?

Can anyone identify the track bookshelf system in Julianne Moore's office (photo 3)? I'm particularly intrigued by what looks like drawer units installed onto the runners.

those rooms are wonderful - well, most of them :-D i find the artwork hanging in front of the books silly. i think it way beyond unpractical - it might work with a single frame, but not if you cover so much of the shelves. and i think it takes away from the art, too.

(why is it so hard to understand or tolerate that some people actually do read books more than once? or hang on to them for other reasons?)

@chicelectic: If you only read books once, you're not the sort of reader who would benefit from a personal library; for such a person, borrowing a book and then returning it is probably good enough, and keeping it around would be annoying.

But some people like to read books several times over -- or they page through them to find a particular passage they remember reading long ago. That's the kind of reader I am, and that's why keeping books out on shelves as mental extensions serves me well.

@AML75: might be either Vitsoe or ISS Design- -- links will probably catch the spam filter, but both google =^)

Good post, which only a true bibliophile may understand. One reason I purchased my current condo was for its den, with a wall of built-in bookshelves which now overflow.

"Books to the ceiling, books to the sky.
My piles of books are a mile high.
How I love them!
How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them."
--Arnold Lobel (1933-1987), American author

For academics and researchers, the ability to return to books for reference purposes is part of the work. We have a 4th bedroom that we're using for a library/study, and its pretty darn useful. I'd love a space purpose-built as a library.

Yes, to each his own...I just can't wrap my mind around the fact that all avid readers are not book lovers. I'm thankful though, as this allows me to purchase new releases at the consignment shop for $3.00. I will say the artwork mounted on the bookshelves nearly sends me over the edge....second only to books arranged by color.

Aside from my fictional faves, I have a decent reference library plus a sizeable collection of vintage children's books many of which are from my own childhood. These have been 'checked out' countless times to extended family during age appropriate seasons. And because they're 'vintage' parents don't have to screen them for the political correctness that has replaced good, sound principles and comment sense :)

I hate having to scroll up and down to look at the picture then the decription...might want to fix this annoying bit of the site. But love #3 and #6!

I love the first picture. It's been a dream of mine to have a house with a tower room I could convert into a library. My book collection is small but growing, maybe a couple hundred, and I love to display them, by author, genre, colour, I always rearrange them! I like the artwork on the shelves. When you lack a lot of wall space it sort of becomes the best way to display two things at once.

Can't IMAGINE a house without a library or a tiny space devoted to books and a snugly spot to read!! Even if I can't spend as much time there as I wish, I'd be lost without it. Way to go Diane Keaton. Never would've thought of that but way cool!! Great and not run of the mill post!!!

Does everyone who has this many books get such a high ceiling to go with them? If so, someone forgot me.

As an academic I can't imagine life without books. I've tried to switch to Kindle but they have a really weak selection of academic non-fiction books (plus its just not the same putting comments in the electronic version). I'm in my mid-20s and I have hundreds of books (all of which I've read) and I can't imagine what my library will look like by the time I'm in my 40s or older. I'd love to read more articles about ways to store books (right now I have 8 extra tall ikea BILLYs but I'm on the verge of out growing them).

Please help with tiny condo dweller store books (I hate putting them in my office since I mostly work from home if I can)!

Love that not a single image has books arranged by color :-).

I keep books because I re-read them, but probably more because they embody memories, the way a photo or some other sentimental artifact does. Looking at my book shelves is like looking at a memoir or diary. (It's why I love to see what's on other people's bookshelves, especially if I don't know them well.)

They are all nice but my fav is #1 and my least is #9. Seems like a very 'cold' room to me.
I give my books away; only keeping those that mean something to me.

There is a site where you can send your books to our soliders. OperationPaperback for those that might be interested.

Agree with TudoPolice, would love a short description just underneath the photo and a longer one at the bottom. I think it might depend on the size of your monitor, so I might also be complaining about the size of my monitor. Would love it if AT did more home library articles. To be perfectly honest, when I finally do find a settle down home, there won't be any of this "reading nook" nonsense for me. I'm DETERMINED to make my house a damn library home. EVEN if I've never read it before... $0.25? Throw it in the bag! (I was taught young, and still believe, that knowledge is power.) I know there won't be enough space in my home, so I might as well make my collection the leading character. Until then I'll have to settle for my plain old bookcase that I got on sale at Tar-zhay, don't be fooled by the backing, it's cardboard that looks like cardboard, not wood. But it does the job well enough to hold my Can't Live Without Ems and the ones on loan from the public library.

Bibliovore: Glorious will be the day I finally allow myself to have enough books to justify Dewey Decimal labels and personalized barcodes. *sigh*

That first room is so NOT me ... but I would LOVE to visit you there. It looks so cozy and the lighting is warm. I just want to curl up ... throw me a blanket.

@ FAUXFAUX: Yes & Amen!! :)

Number 1 looks so incredibly cozy and inviting ... I suspect I could live a long time in that blue chair!!!!

I am the type of a person who will read a (really great) book mutliple times and if I had more space, there would be a lot more books in my house.

To me, there are three tools that are more important to my reading life than a library: a comfortable chair, a good lamp, and a side table. I would love to see a post about reading chairs -- pictures of chairs that real people sit in for an hour or two at a time, reading. I have been searching for the ideal reading chair for years -- the closest I have gotten is the IKEA Poang, so I'm sticking with that for now.

#6 is my dream, but unatttainable in reality (short of a lottery win and superb luck with real estate).

But following up on JeffreyK's comment, I think the time has come for an AT post on the ideal reading chair.

@Maike, I have art hanging in front of books in my study, though not, perhaps, as many as are shown here. The house I live in was built in the early 20th c: there are lots of windows and lots of drawers but not many expanses of wall on which to hang art or store books. I have had no trouble retrieving any book from behind the art. It is only slightly more difficult than retrieving a dish from a cupboard or a book from a barrister's case, where one has to open a door. I'm not certain that it's ideal but it works for us. http://tinyurl.com/7g7dqg7

Wish I knew where the purple rug in #2 is from....

I own hundreds of books. Rarely do I reread any. But I love them all. I need them around me. The words on the pages therein MUST be around. I have to possess them. If you have to rationalize it, perhaps it's not for you. The rest of us greedily take and read with abandon.

It's a sorry day when posters feel the need to *apologize* for having books, and loving books, and actually reading and rereading books, and wanting to surround themselves in their homes with all the comfort and knowledge that lies within their pages. So you walk into my place and see a lot of books and automatically think I'm old fashioned and regressive? I walk into your place and see no books? All due apologies, but I automatically think you're a moron.

I love everything about books. There are book shelves in every single room of my house. I have old books, new books, hard cover books, soft cover books, big books, little books, gardening books, cook books, decorating books, novels, history books............. This post immediately caught my attention because I love looking at other people's books almost as much as I love looking at my own books! (The only thing I don't love is pictures hanging in front of books. I mean, why?)

I like the black bookshelves in number 6, and the way the books are displayed, with their covers facing out.

We've just bought our own place and the thing we spent money on was having a wall-to-wall-floor-to-ceiling custom made bookshelf built. It totally dominates the flat and we love it.

It also feels very hospitable because our books say so much about us and our guests can't help but see them, so we share a lot about ourselves with those who come into our home.

I always sigh when I see "art" in front of books. How do you reach the books ? How do you even remember the books hidden behind after a while ?

I used to be a bookworm, but as I grew up, moved around a lot and read less, I realized that I don't need to have that many books with me. Now that I'm settled in a house we bought and will probably live in for the next 15 years, I have a collection of 200 books. Those are the ones I keep reading and reading (ranging from Jane Austen to Plato and Pratchett). I don't know how I do it, but I can tell which books I'm going to read again, which are just going to sit there. I love to look at my five shelves. As a student, I used to buy tons of books, but right now, I take a lot of time to find THE perfect edition, the best translation if it isn't a language I know, the best cover, the best paper, vintage if possible... so I add probably 10 books a year, while I may read around 50 new books (let's not count the 200th time I read Pride and Prejudice). That balance is one of the best thing that happened to me: I can keep my library reasonably contained, and I cherish the few books that mean something to me. If I don't rate a book as outstanding, I just give it to charity and remember the title so I can borrow it if necessary.

Sign me up for the 7th one, it looks like heavan.

surprised that my favorite was Julianne Moore's library. clean, modern and still warm.

what a great post...i'm thinking of rearranging my office/library this week so it gives me a few ideas!

I agree with the earlier commenter who appreciated that none of these libraries have books arranged by color. I like to go back and re-read old favorites, and I lend out books fairly frequently, so for me by genre and alphabetical by author (or subject if it's a biography) is the way to go. If I had to pick favorites here, I think I'd say photos 1,3,6 and 10 are my favorites. I think libraries should be warm, cozy places, and those are the ones that would make me want to curl up with a book the most. :-)

And despite the fact that the den is a dedicated library/music room, there's still quite a bit of spill-over into other rooms. My husband teases me because we have bookcases in nearly every room of the house, but that's what he gets for marrying a librarian! ;-)

Thank you for this post! I have been completely obsessed with libraries lately!

As one of the bibliophiles with a working library (thanks to being a writer and English teacher and current PhD student), I would love to see AT do a feature on working libraries, the ones that have a purpose and use beyond decor, especially creating a library on a budget (and in a small space). So many of these don't feel like places you could put your feet up and take a book off the shelf. Don't get me wrong, all these make me drool, and my favorite question to ask my writer/teacher friends is "how do you organize your library?"--but the commenters here who post about their libraries, those are the ones I would really like to see. Show me the beat-up paperbacks, the hardcovers found in thrift stores, the ones handed down from grandparents (I have a copy of Poe that my grandpa used in college). Show me the libraries that really feel like they're filled with stories.

Ah!

To recap some of these comments: If you love books, you can't also love pictures.

For any renter who is unable hang art on the walls, one's bookcases must be a godsend. So for all you haters, there is actually thought behind the madness.

Love this post. I am an academic, who loves books, who loves to hoard and therefore, have at various points in my life, had rather large libraries. Unfortunately, I have also had to move many times and let me tell you, it is very hard to cull one's collected works.

My one pearl for people in similar situations, IKEA Billy in white (recedes into the white walls).

I LOVE this post!! We are a book-loving family - so we added several built-in bookshelves to our eat-in kitchen/dining room when we bought our 1909 house, and also have stand-along shelves in the living room. Books near a table, where we can spread out, is perfect for us.

However, now that we have a child, it's not nearly enough to house our collection. Our 4 year old son already has over 500 books of his own - not one of them a Disney movie book. He collects more each month (Goodwill is a great place for gently used, classic kids books) and he is overrunning the space! We need to install more bookshelves and I really like the ideas on this post!! :)

The greatest storage/shelving solution for anyone and everyone is the Ikea Enetri shelf, which may not be in production anymore but can easily be found on Craigslist, etc. It's back and sides open design make it easy for me to combine my books, art, CD player, and anything else I want to shelve or display, in a really beautiful, modern way. The shelves appear light and airy, not clunky like so many bookshelves, and are of excellent quality, and less common than the ubiquitous Billy bookcase.

I wouldn't call myself an art over bookcase hater, but I think what some readers are trying to say is that a book cover, even its spine, is art. So hanging pieces over bookcases is like placing a painting/sculpture in front of a fresco. It disturbs some of the anal retentive tendencies we inherit from loving to organize books.

I agree with ruckus that there's no need to apologize for greedily keeping books when the public library doesn't want to house them or when they'll only end up at the dump (and I've seen it happen). But I also agree with discerning about making an effort to find the very best editions. Those are the ones I keep in a private case in my bedroom, too precious to allow just anybody to borrow. It's why I don't mind grabbing western paperbacks for a dime, or spending five dollars on The Four Books on Architecture. They're made for heavy use and if something is accidentally spilled on them, a page is torn, it can be fixed and loaned again because the best copies are for my personal use.

Also, my current bookcase leans on the modernish side, and no one is sadder about that than me. I prefer a more traditional look, and even have some pieces I couldn't pass up in storage due to space issues. My recommendation is to scour garage sales, thrift stores, and swap meets. You'll probably only find fixer uppers like I did, but the time spent will be so worth it. I can't afford $1000+ on furniture from Restoration Hardware, much as I'd like to, so I consider myself lucky to find a paint peeling, knob missing, one-door-nearly-falling-off armoire for $50 and fixing it up to look like I got it from RH.

Are there any AT posts highlighting specific styles of architecture? I'd love to see some like that.

The taller the ceilings the more I like them...these are all so beautiful!

Picture number 8 combines my favorite things, books and fine art. And, a comfortable place to sit to read those books. I could dream away many hours in that beautiful space.

It's interesting that most of those photos show loft-like spaces. I would love to get all my books into one place, but our older home has many small rooms with lots of doors and windows, so for now the books are scattered about, and most are in the basement. When we lived in apartments, we had no basement space, so most books were in our living room and foyer, which was quite cozy, really. But I want to use our wall space for art now that we have our own home.