My (Physical) Bookshelf

Ever since I saw Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” I have wanted a library like the one Belle gets in the Beast’s castle:

But until I have more money/space/books, I will just have to settle for this:

Right after buying the second of these bookcases, I heard a piece on NPR that lamented the “death of the book” and the redesigned BILLY bookcase.

The latest distress signal being sounded on the chat sites I share with my bookish friends is that IKEA is about to introduce an updated version of its classic BILLY bookcase — some 10 of which totter to overflowing in my own basement. Anticipating “the death of the book,” IKEA has redesigned the good old BILLY with deeper shelves and glass doors, thus transforming it from a bookcase into a tchotchke cabinet.

-Maureen Corrigan, ‘The Swerve’: Ideas That Rooted The Renaissance

This is why they didn’t have the beech anymore, and this is why I have two different colors. (I saw the add-on doors at IKEA when I saw the second one, and they didn’t even close properly. :mad:)

Goodreads replacement?

Or supplement?

I signed up for Goodreads way back in 2007, and while they make it so easy to keep track of books for you, I never really got into it. I was in Japan at the time, so I didn’t have much access to English books, and my Japanese reading was (and still is) embarrassingly slow. As a result, I collected Japanese books that I wanted to read some day, and I read what I could find at the local library.

Then I pretty much forgot about Goodreads. I had a handful of friends who used it, but I was too overwhelmed alternately by how many and then how few books I was reading to think about updating it.

Fast forward to the end of 2010, when I was looking for books to use in my book club classes. I started making a list of books from school/teacher book lists to skim through, supplemented by books that just looked interesting when I browsed the library.

I ended up with my own system of keeping track of books, but I kept wanting to review the book I just read and read the next book in my pile at the same time. I started a few reviews (which will be the first ones on this blog), but most of the books were library books that needed to be returned, so I read them first. And then when I went to return them, I would find more books to read.

Finally, at the end of summer 2011, I finished up my last pile of books and brought them back to their respective libraries (going when they were closed on purpose and using the book drops so I wouldn’t be able to get new books!) And then I ordered some used books online. And put off reading them.

Anyway, my books are getting dustier by the day, but I am slowly transferring (and updating) my book lists and review notes to this blog. I am trying to write reviews for the books I read before I forget what was in them, but I suspect I will have to check some of them out from the library again…

P.S.–Here’s a link to my neglected Goodreads account in case I ever decide to update it…