Murder by Death

Shelving.  That elusive infrastructure that literally supports every bibliophile's habit.  There's never enough of it; it's been in perpetual shortage since the first library in Alexandria was built and a new daily lament was heard:  We're running out of room for all these scrolls!!! 

This bibliophile has been especially challenged by her delusional idea that it would be good for her character to live in a small home (Learning to live with less will be good for me!).  Less of everything except books, of course.  Coupled with the equally delusional: I'll never fill this small "second bedroom" with books - this will be fine!, I'm constantly challenging the laws of physics, attempting to fit an infinite number of books in a very finite space.

I know a lot of my fellow bibliophile friends double-row their bookshelves.  I've never been able to stomach the idea, because, of course, I will immediately want/need the books in the back row and not be able to find/access them.  But I've been thinking about this ...  

Last weekend was spectacular, weather wise - pure sunshine and warmish temps - so I cajoled MT into rummaging around in our shed for scrap wood.  A bit of further sweet-talking and he sawed some of it down, left me with the hammer drill, self-drilling screws and a couple of cans of left over paint. The result was two of these:

I did the bare minimum putting these together: the quickest sanding, one coat of black paint and one coat of clear.  I eyeballed the location of the legs and hammer-drilled the screws in.  What are they?  Well, they're elevated shelves that are half the depth of my bookcase shelves.  In the bookcases, they look like this:

This is not the greatest picture for depth perception, but you get the gist.  They allow me to double shelf my smaller books, but still allow me to see the titles AND easily access the books in the back.  Finished it looks like this:

With the smaller books it works PERFECTLY (those are my Agatha Christie books).  I'm not as pleased with the look when I add the larger hardcovers, as you can see them on the right.  They fit fine, but they look too 'in your face', but I didn't want to waste the space.  I doubt I'll do more of these for my hardcover fiction, but I'm definitely going to cobble together some more for my smaller non-fiction books and my paperbacks.  

I figure this should buy me at least one month before I have to start stressing about bookshelf space again!