What a delightful read, thank you Colin. I edit my bookshelf about once a year, and after the big clean it always takes weeks of heavy use and putting things back where they don't belong until the look I'm after is re-established.
Thank you Colin. I agree wholeheartedly. Instagram has made us believe that we should all be living in a museum, instead of a welcoming home, a place where people use things, where family comes together in happy chaos.
I guess people do the “one candle one rock” thing because you can’t possibly show life taking over with styling. Or can you? Add some dust to the shelves and a few unwanted receipts ;)
Jokes aside, I agree with what you wrote but the next step should be about buying books for reading only and not curating your collection (something I struggle with). A sparse but intentional bookshelf that is not trying to impress anyone
Whenever I move (which has been often), my books were always the first things I settled into place. Even when I moved all the way to France, my big focus was how to get the hundreds of them across the ocean safely!
Loved it when you called a bookshelf an autobiography because I feel like my book collection really represents who I am and what’s going on in my enthusiastically curious and loud brain. ❣️
When we moved into our home, there was a room off the entryway that I knew would be perfect as a library. After several years of “waiting for the right time,” my husband & brother-in-law built shelves (with shelf-height to the specifications of the books I had been lovingly & intentionally collecting) & now, several years later, the library is my favorite room in the house. There is nothing on the wall of shelves except for books, hundreds of books, on art, design, landscaping, poetry, fiction, old copies of The Paris Review, just…books. (& all things that I read! Nothing is there frivolously or “for show” or without purpose) I have plenty of other surfaces in my home that I attempt to “style” within an inch of their lives, but the library shelves are just books, which feels like the way it should be. 🥹
This is the correct take
What a delightful read, thank you Colin. I edit my bookshelf about once a year, and after the big clean it always takes weeks of heavy use and putting things back where they don't belong until the look I'm after is re-established.
Thank you Colin. I agree wholeheartedly. Instagram has made us believe that we should all be living in a museum, instead of a welcoming home, a place where people use things, where family comes together in happy chaos.
At last! So refreshing
I guess people do the “one candle one rock” thing because you can’t possibly show life taking over with styling. Or can you? Add some dust to the shelves and a few unwanted receipts ;)
Jokes aside, I agree with what you wrote but the next step should be about buying books for reading only and not curating your collection (something I struggle with). A sparse but intentional bookshelf that is not trying to impress anyone
Amen!🤎
If you don’t have a book collection yet please come to my apartment and take one of my hideous piles …..
I love love books - each of these images captures some romantic fantasy I have of living in solitude, reading.
Thank you for creating this!
Whenever I move (which has been often), my books were always the first things I settled into place. Even when I moved all the way to France, my big focus was how to get the hundreds of them across the ocean safely!
Loved it when you called a bookshelf an autobiography because I feel like my book collection really represents who I am and what’s going on in my enthusiastically curious and loud brain. ❣️
Lovely
The question is what do I do with the huge brightly colored fantasy books 😆
Those photographs say it all….
We have book shelves in 7 of our rooms. Not all floor to ceiling though. It’s comforting.
Yes 🙌 I love this perspective and totally agree
When we moved into our home, there was a room off the entryway that I knew would be perfect as a library. After several years of “waiting for the right time,” my husband & brother-in-law built shelves (with shelf-height to the specifications of the books I had been lovingly & intentionally collecting) & now, several years later, the library is my favorite room in the house. There is nothing on the wall of shelves except for books, hundreds of books, on art, design, landscaping, poetry, fiction, old copies of The Paris Review, just…books. (& all things that I read! Nothing is there frivolously or “for show” or without purpose) I have plenty of other surfaces in my home that I attempt to “style” within an inch of their lives, but the library shelves are just books, which feels like the way it should be. 🥹
Love this point, and the images are 'chefs kiss' !