Books & Bookcases

Anne went with me to Cornelius yesterday evening to look for a bookcase for my paperback books. We have some built in bookshelves in the basement, but they were starting to get full and books were piling up in little stacks here and there. Shelving paperbacks on a regular bookcase is a waste of space. Regular bookcase shelves are twice as deep and twice as tall as a paperback book. What I needed is something like a media storage rack that is made for CD's, DVD's and the like. Many of these racks are very rack-like, spindly legs and brackets, not very much like a bookshelf at all. Others are very much like a bookshelf, but just on a smaller scale, and that is what I was looking for.

We stopped at Murphy's Furniture. They did not much in the way of what I was looking for, though they did have a bunch of slim end tables that we could use in the TV room. Expensive, though.

On to Freddie's (hypermarket). DVD storage racks were on display right inside the front door. They could work, but one is black, and one has flanges partially obscuring the front of the shelves, and they only have one of each. Black might be alright for media storage, all high-tech and all, but bookcases really need to be brown like wood and old libraries and such.

We wander back to the furniture section and I eventually pick out a couple of folding DVD racks, made out of wood, in Thailand. They also had a big storage cabinet with fold out doors, but it was also black, and it was $200. The racks I picked out were on sale: two for $75.

When I start putting the racks together (some assembly required), I find that one is missing the hardware package. I will have to call and see if the distributor can mail me one. Not surprisingly the construction is a little iffy. The wood work is good, but the hardware is a little sloppy, bent, wrong screws, etc. But it is close enough. I only have to make one adjustment to get it put together. Daughter helps.

There are a couple of design issues I don't like, but for $75, what can you expect. When I start loading books onto the shelves I notice that the open sides do not hold the outer edge of the book. They hold the inner edge fine, but the outer edge falls right in the hole. Then there are the hinges at the back of the sides. Trying to slide a book in at the end of the shelf causes the the edge of the book to run into these surface mounted hinges. If you are not careful, the book can easily be damaged. A spacer at the back of the shelf might correct both of these problems. The last problem is the foot long feet attached to the bottom, necessary to keep such a shallow cabinet from tipping forward, or back, but they also cause a space to be left between adjacent cabinets and between the cabinets and the wall, not to mention giving you something to trip over out in front. I could leave the feet off if I was willing to put a screw in the wall, and if I ever settle on a location, I may do that.

The shelves are not quite a foot wide, but there are six of them, and they can hold as many books as two of the shelves in the big built-in bookcase. Moving just my science Fiction paperbacks from the big bookcase to the small one freed up two whole shelves. As there are only 16 shelves in the big bookcase, this is a big improvement.

But why hang onto the paperbacks at all? I've read them once, I probably won't read them again. And they are paperbacks after all, which means they are printed on cheap paper and they will deteriorate and crumble into dust in a relatively short time span. They are not designed to be kept forever. Not only that, but the bindings are often so creased it can make it very difficult to even read the title off the spine. Well, let me just say this about that.

I used to take all the books I had read down to Powell's and sell them, which brought me a little money and a little shelf space. After a while I discovered that most of the books that I did have, I did not want. They were books that I was planning on reading, or had started reading, but never finished. I decided this was dumb, so I changed my policy. Now, if I start reading a book, and find I do not enjoy it, I put it in the reject pile. When the pile gets big enough, the reject pile goes to the bookstore. Books I read and enjoy go on my bookshelf. Now I can look at my bookshelf and say "I enjoyed those books", which brings me some measure of happiness.