Books Do Furnish A Room: The Final Volumes

We venture underground for our last stop on the tour of the bookshelves at Pack Mansions, into the basement where our kitchen and, oddly, our bathroom are to be found.

Unsurprisingly we keep our cookery books here.  The most frequently used tend to live on the work surface so that they can be liberally splattered with cake mixture and pasta sauce while we bake and cook.

For some reason the handsome volume England In Particular (not a cookbook at all) is plonked right in the middle. This may explain why we never have never read any of it.  I hear it is rather good.

The rest of the cookery collection reside here, on a shelf that is starting to buckle from the weight of recipes.  You will notice a rich vein of Donna Hays (she's great), quite a few Nigel Slaters and then a pretty random sprinkling of others.  I think I spy a Jamie Oliver, from back in the days when his books didn't cost £26, and that fat orange one is by Sheila Alexander who is, I am reliably informed, an Australian Delia.

I had to photograph the shelf in two chunks as there is a bloody great pillar in the line of vision otherwise.  I am more of a baker than a chef so I rarely use the savoury recipes.  The only ones I bother with are the Donna Hays, by far my favourite cookery writer.  I have yet to have a failure with any of hers and they tend to be simple, tasty and always end up looking just like the picture.

(As an aside, one of the reasons for all these shelves and bookcases is that Victorian houses don't usually have much in the way of storage, designed as they were to be full of good old Victorian furniture and not with televisions, stereos and the like.  My other half devised a cunning scheme to create loads of storage without taking up any space which you can see below.

These are the stairs into the basement.  We have managed to get loads of stuff in them, each drawer goes back for almost a metre.  You don't notice them on the way down but they are revealed in all their practical glory on the way up.  We have to thank genius carpenter Harvey once again for the craftsmanship).

And finally we come on to the real highbrow section, the toilet library.  The perfect toilet book needs to have chapters or sections that are easy to read within a certain time frame.  The optimum time will naturally depend upon your, ahem, routine but I tend to go for poetry and humour; things I can dip in and out of without losing the thread.

So there you have it, a tour of the shelves.  I've shown you mine, time for you to show me yours.  If any of you do post similar self-indulgent content on your own blogs please let us know here so we can all wander over and gawk.

Comments

[dovegreyreader]

I can't see Hugh EatAlltheRoadKillasWell in there, surely all carnivores have Hugh on their shelves?

[dovegreyreader]

PS Those stairs are darned clever, do you have a system for knowing what's in which?

[Scott Pack]

DGR, if you look again you might find Hugh in all his carnivore glory.

As for the stairs, most of the family know what is in each. I just open them up and take a look - works every time.

[Maria]

Those are the coolest stairs I've seen. What an ingenius idea!!!!!

Brilliant!

[The Bookseller to the Stars]

Honestly, this "series" of posts have been the most self-indulgent and gratifying piece of toss I have ever seen on this blog. Exactly, what were you attempting, supposed John Peel of Books, by doing this?

We know that you are a big reader, you told us how many books you get through, so what sort of insecurities are there in your life are there that you feel that you need to justify your previously destroyed postings about the extent of your library.

This was purely an ego massage on your behalf and frankly, very boring and pointless. Sorry.

[Johnson]

I like looking at books just about as much as I like reading them. So thanks for pictures. But the chef with the orange cookbook, is Stephanie Alexander, not Sheila. That was a fairly big error. You should take it off the shelf of unused cookbooks.

[Scott Pack]

No need to apologise BTTS, everyone else seemed to enjoy them. I tend to find that people with a real love of books have a compulsive curiousity regarding the bookshelves of others, I know I do. Subscription to that belief is not compulsory though.

[Scott Pack]

Well corrected Johnson, and to think that all I needed to do was lean forward and double check before typing.

[Simon S]

Lighten up Bookseller! These posts have been lots of fun. And what is the point of accusing someone of being self-indulgent when they have already held their hands up and said as much in the post itself? Disagreeing with a blog post and saying so is one thing, just being unpleasant for the sake of it is quite sad if you ask me.

[lilyloulou]

Well, I'm always fascinated to see what books people actually live - I've enjoyed the 'series'. The whole point of the great website http://www.librarything.com/ (which I know has been blogged about on here before) is that people are able to browse and share their libraries with each other on line. This is just the same idea but with pretty pictures.

[alex Johnson]

What about the children's bookshelves? Also, have you seen these? http://shedworking.blogspot.com/2006/12/unwrap-garden-office-this-christmas.html

[Scott Pack]

A very good point Alex, and the honest answer is that I couldn't get into their room when I was taking the pics as they were doing something secretive and had the keep out sign clearly displayed on the door. I will post a supplementary entry sometime soon, if only to wind up BTTS.

[Beverly James]

Hang on a minute. So posting pictures of your bookshelves (nice stairs by the way) on a blog about books is in some way inappropriate but creating an entire online persona around the fact that a few celebrities buy books in your shop is perfectly acceptable? Bookseller To The Stars? Celebs buy all manner of things in all sorts of shops. Should we expect Shoeseller To The Stars? Window Cleaner To The Stars? Checkout Girl To The Stars?

Actually, Window Cleaner To The Stars might be a good idea.

[dan]

I was intrigued by this 'John Peel of books' tag BTTS. So I quickly searched online and it appears that only person to ever refer to Big Mouth in such a way is you. Poor form to imply otherwise in your post methinks.

[Maria]

And to wind up bookseller further, you can enter your pixs in a librarything contest. They WANT pictures of books:

http://www.librarything.com/blog/2007/02/ten-million-books-and-contest_07.php

But it ends soon, I think. Luckily you have the pixs. All you have to do is choose the best one. :>)