Custom built shelving, special reading chairs, intricate book sculptures, if you have ever thought of it, it is here in between the front and back cover. And some of the designs are wacky and not quite to my taste. Personally I like the idea of floor to ceiling shelving throughout a double height room, the lower sections are cupboards, framing around tall sash windows with their own little window seats, a ladder that is attached to a railing along the top and wheels on the bottom to go zooming around. Yeah, I’ve thought about this very seriously.
The images are cool and if you’re not looking for something stimulating this is perfect to flick through and dream of your own library. Silly me, I read the accompanying words. Well, the text is pretty pointless with no real direction for designing your own shelving just ramblings and the odd insult to self-published authors; yeah, Thompson worked in the publishing industry and thinks traditional is the only way, though I’d like to use his own work as evidence to the contradictive. Several times the layout has been in the incorrect order, when one paragraph hasn’t ended it isn’t necessarily continued on the following or even the page after that, sometimes its eight pages later and this happens a couple of times. Well done editors for picking up that mistake. Just check out 44 and then see it continue onto 50, also over at 120 and ends on 127 with a different section of text in between. So confusing.
Okay, final thing to say; this is good to flick through for ideas but it lacks substance so don’t really bother reading the text. Find what you like and add it to the dream house plan. But if you’re not a reader and have no collection to care for, then how do you live?!