Product Description

At Home with Books is a visual delight, a helpful resource, and an inspiration for every bibliophile with a growing home library. Includes professional advice on editing and categorizing your library; caring for your books; preserving, restoring, and storing rare books; finding out-of-print books; and choosing furniture, lighting, and shelving. Full-color photographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24585 in Books
• Published on: 1995-10-31
• Released on: 1995-10-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Amazon.com Review
For the bibliophile anxious to enhance the home library, At Home with Books presents both practical advice and divine inspiration. Chapters on starting a collection, organizing the library, and caring for books offer useful information on categorizing, editing, storage, and space-saving--"break down the books into categories by subject matter ... and compare their quantities to the available shelf space. If necessary, measure. Consider the book's height as well as its width. You may need to adjust your shelves to optimize your space." "Library Lighting," "The Art of the Bookshelf," and "Library Ladders" further encourage collectors to create a personal space suitable for its intended purpose, yet reflective of one's passion--"shelf lighting can draw attention to cherished objects and volumes; track lights can highlight certain areas of your room." Interspersed throughout these highly helpful chapters are interviews with noteworthy bibliophiles, including Keith Richards, Loren and Frances Rothschild, Bill Blass, and Paul Getty, whose "literary lairs"--ranging from the classic book-lined walls to books in the kitchen and the bathroom--are beautifully photographed, making At Home with Books not only a valuable resource for the dedicated collector, but a beautiful addition to any collection.

From Booklist
Less a book about libraries, as its Dewey classification asserts, than an interior-design album, this lavish tome yet stresses the importance of books in the lives of even the rich and famous, even when they're not writers. Oh, some whose book troves appear do write for a living: for instance, poet Richard Howard, whose small New York apartment walls are near-totally covered with books. Others whose entire names are famous include designer Bill Blass and Rolling Stone Keith Richards, but of the rest, a few just have impressive surnames (Rothschild, Getty, Biddle), one has a title (the duke of Devonshire), and the remainder have monikers as discreet as their fortunes are large. A terrific browsing book, thanks to Christopher Simon Sykes' tasteful photos, helpfully concluded by a resource directory of tony rare-book dealers, book fairs, bookbinders, sources of library furnishings, etc. Ray Olson

From the Inside Flap
At Home with Books is a visual delight, a helpful resource, and an inspiration for every bibliophile with a growing home library. Includes professional advice on editing and categorizing your library; caring for your books; preserving, restoring, and storing rare books; finding out-of-print books; and choosing furniture, lighting, and shelving. Full-color photographs.

Customer Reviews

A Must Have for the True Bibliophile!
"At Home With Books: How Book Lovers Live and Care for Their Libraries", is a book about books, and book lovers --forty of them. Featured in this book are the diverse libraries created for the passion they all share. This book includes interviews with these bibliophiles. A common trait reveals that the majority of book lovers had an early love for books, that grew as they got older.

This book features beautiful illustrations of many many personal libraries (some far too rich for my taste), but simply spectacular. There is also a lot of practical information on how to arrange and store books, integrate new books into your collection, how to thin out collections, and how to create a comfortable place to read with the right shelving, lighting and furniture.

I really enjoyed flipping the pages, studying the photos, and reading about others with serious book addictions. It gave me some great ideas and made me feel better about my book obsession as well.

Valentine's gift for husband
My husband is an English professor and our house is filled with books. I read about this one in the Chronicle of Higher Education and knew he would love it. We always try to purchase unusual Valentine's gifts, so it seemed a perfect time to add it to our collection. He loves the book and has taken it to work to share with colleagues.

Highly recommended
Everything you need to know about creating and caring for your home library is in here. A must read/"must-have" for book-lovers.