The Bookcase Meme

So I saw this on someone's blog months ago and thought it was a good idea, took the pics, then didn't get any further! The idea is that you go round the house/flat/hovel/room, take pictures of the places where you keep your books and, er, talk about it! I think. I can't actually find the original blog I saw it on now...

So, I'm going to start off downstairs, in the living room. This is a Billy bookcase from IKEA, put together with much swearing by me wielding an electric screwdriver (very scary) and attached to the wall by some blokes from "Hire a Hubby" after I proved to be completely incapable with a drill (especially when On The Blob). It is now at 90 degrees to the wall, but not the floor - this is what happens when you live in an Edwardian house. There was also meant to be a glass door on the middle bit, but due to the general wonkiness of everything it can't go on! In the little one to the left are knitting patterns printed off the internet, plus some knitting magazines. The rest of the shelves are full of my novel/fiction collection and are mostly double-stacked with the stuff I read as a kid behind. I did have a clear out when I moved and about a third of my novels went on Green Metropolis, this is what's left! I've interpreted "fiction" fairly broadly, as anything that's not factual (ha!) so there's all sorts of random stuff on here, from Bridget Jones, to Harry Potter in Latin, via the Illiad...

Then onto the dining room, where there's a big tall thingy (from IKEA but actually belonging to my brother) holding all my CDs and a collapsible bookcase from John Lewis. It's nice and practical (it's now lived in 3 houses) as it collapses but it weighs a TON! Books on here are:
Top shelf - recipe books and general books about food.
Middle shelf - knitting books, plus a few about sewing.
Bottom shelf - DIY guides, gardening stuff, maps of local area...
The bookends are horses carved from wood from Windsor Great Park (near where I was at university first time round) and were a 21st present.

But most of my books are upstairs in my study. This is my desk (which was my brother's when he was at school!) where I work from home some days and where I'm writing this now. The shelf above the desk has reference resources for work, plus books that are useful (for work) - atlases, dictionary, Latin, French and Greek dictionaries & grammar, thesaurus. UKMARC guide (you don't want to know), Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (you really don't want to know) and books with titles like: "A primer of ecclesiastical Latin" and "Provenance research in book history". And moving swiftly on...


Across from the desk is a bookcase my godmother no longer needed so I requisitioned. It's got my Ordnance Survey maps on, guides to various long-distance paths, random books about hobbies, a few Bibles, Book of Common Prayer, my theology/philosophy books that are small enough to fit on here and a few more Greek/Latin resources, plus some stuff about youth hostels. Yes. This is the Dumping Ground bookcase!

Then next to my desk there's a bookcase constructed by my Mum when she was a teenager (!), which has books from my first degree and MA on it, plus journals I subscribe to now (Library History, The Library, some boring stuff from CILIP) and journals I used to subscribe to (Britannia). Plus theology and philosophy books that were too big to fit on the other bookcase! Oh, and the "Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland" which is my most expensive book purchase ever!

And then I have plans to put another bookcase in this gap on my upstairs landing. It's 2cm too small for another Billy, but I think I've found another one as the other bookcases are getting rather full and I still have piles of books left to move into the house...


So, where do you keep your books?