Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 00:26:19 -0400
From: Ted White <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Book shelves and cases
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

Madeleine Yeh wrote:

>  I have just flooded my apartment with cheap book cases from Home
>  depot. Come in a box and have cardboard backing. These come
>  together easily with a minimum of tools. But require 2 people to put
>  them together and carry them around. They are heavy, and I doubt they
>  would survive a move. Its hard thinking of book cases as disposable
>  -- use once and throw away, but thats what these are. I am
>  daydreaming of bookcases that are light, stable, durable and cheap
>  that I can make myself. Its a pipe dream. But how close can anyone
>  come? Book cases are nice in that books can slip over the edge or
>  worse the back like some book shelves. I read some of the 60's and
>  70's books on nomadic furniture and apartment living. The days when
>  wooden cubes and bean bag chairs were praised for portability. I once
>  dreamed of having the paperbacks in something like a china cabinet
>  with shallow drawers each holding a single layer of paperbacks. A
>  friend was going to make them but he moved before he found time. This
>  was David Woodward in Baltimore, who kept his books in shallow wooden
>  boxes that could be rested against the wall in an apartment, and
>  moved in the boxes when he had to relocate. What is everyone's ideal
>  book storage solution -- not whats practical like block and boards --
>  but what they would like if they had money and space and time?

Back when I lived in Greenwich Village I found the Perfect Solution:
peach crates.  Lightweight wooden boxes which I found thrown out on the
street in front of dozens of small shops in the Village.  I painted them
black and stacked them on their sides to create "modular shelves."  They
held TIME-sized magazines or books, fanzines, comic books or pulp
magazines.  And when I moved to Brooklyn a couple years later, they were
easy to pick up, one at a time, still full, and transport.  I still have
some in my basement....

--Ted White