A Book-Related Miscellany
Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
The other day I was going to take part in Dan’s book-counting experiment, but I soon realized that it was a hopeless task. My bookshelves are a disaster. It’s like the Titanic—word’s gotten out that there aren’t enough lifeboats, so everybody’s on the main deck jonesing for a spot—instead of a nice orderly evacuation that Eliot and the other upper-crust folks expect, all the books keep piling onto one another, lunging after lifeboats that aren’t really there. So Billy Collins is right next to Chaucer, and a hardly read Catholic Catechism is staring down the dog-eared copies of Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, and then the band plays this drag of a song, and the lights go out, and I realize that I’ve got to get another shelf before I do any counting at all.
Speaking of sinking ships—that brings up an all-too-true literature death. OK, so the poet Hart Crane killed himself by jumping off a steamship on the way home from Mexico. Earlier in his life, he’d worked at his father’s candy factory. What candy did his father invent, you ask? The lifesaver. Is it wrong of me to find this funny? (Is it too soon?)
Anyway, to solve my bookshelf problem, I built a couple floating bookshelves, as they’re a pretty easy DIY project and they look kind of neat when they’re done. And the name isn’t embellishment; they really do look like they’re floating. In fact, on occasion, I like to walk by mine and pretend I’m Rod Serling at the beginning of an episode of the Twilight Zone. As an added bonus, you get to choose a book that you don’t like and drill screws into it. I went to a thrift store and found a book of Norman Rockwell’s, whose work I hate. (If I’d seen a Thomas Kincaid book, I would’ve gladly used that, believe me.)
The old fashioned hollowed-out book is another fun book-related project. It too lets you deface a book, but it’s got to be thick enough to be hollowed out. For this project, I chose a guide to tax law of 1991. Granted, unless one’s a drug dealer or an international man/woman of mystery, it doesn’t have a lot of practical use. (I keep my passport in mine.) Nevertheless, having a secret compartment can’t hurt, right?
My sad excuse for a home security system.
Or for those of y’all who want a ladder bookshelf, here’s a how-to for that.
The Hidden Door Bookshelf is a bit more involved. It’s essentially a wall-to-ceiling bookshelf concealing a door. I don’t know about you, but I love secret passageways and all that.
For other DIY fun, check out Instructables and Lifehacker.
Speaking of secret passageways, this brings to mind the Winchester Mystery House in California, which was under continuous construction from the late 1800s to the early 1920s. It includes hallways that lead to nowhere, doors that open into brick walls, and a staircase that leads directly to the ceiling. Here’s a link with a whole slew of other weird houses.
And finally, here’s an album of some pretty great bookstore photos.
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