The book on the bookshelf

I enjoyed the book, I'm glad to have read it. It had enough relevant content for a book (his book on pencils felt stretched), which was nice. The fact books used to be shelved with the spine in was fascinating, but made sense after reading this book. That said, he more than once started rambling on an opinion presented as a given. (To be clear, I didn't mind where he told a personal story--those overall were smoothly interwoven and often good transitions.). The illustrations were complimentary and useful--he needed a few more; there are places where a picture could have saved a lot of awkward description. It wandered between book history and bookshelf (or book press--I do like having that term now, as bookshelf is unclear between the multi-shelf thing and a single shelf on it), but that's because they evolved together! An easy read with lots of fascinating historical tidbits throughout. A bit rambling, but not too bad. He found interesting quotes from various times and sources. In an unfortunate twist, reading one book has added two more to my to-be-read list!

This is a history of bookshelves, and how people have been organizing books since the time we had books as scrolls. His main argument is that the book shelf evolved as people needed better ways to store and arrange books; it came forth out of necessity. The idea is an intriguing one, and there is a lot that people who love reading about books will probably enjoy. I found the segments on medieval libraries and monasteries to be very interesting. However, the book lost steam for me about halfway down the road. By the time I got to the chapter on moveable and compact shelving, I just wanted for the book to be done already. This last part was a bit on the tedious side. Librarians will likely find something to like in this book as well.

I can say that at least this book was better than his other book on the pencil. That other book I dropped because it was pretty much unreadable. Overall, for people who enjoy reading books about books and reading, I would consider this an optional book.