Above: The living room of a converted French barn designed by Jacques Grange for Pierre Passebon, originally published in the Dec.-Jan. 1997 issue of ELLE Decor.
John Waters may be known for a saltier quote on books, as seen on Strand Book Store totes everywhere, but my favorite saying of his has always been more family-friendly: “Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library. Life is nothing if you’re not obsessed.”
Growing up, I was surrounded by books—particularly at my grandfather’s house. If obsession is the meaning of life, he lived a full one by Waters’s standards. Every inch of his Northern California property was given over to sheds, lean-tos, and A-frames built to house his ever-growing library. Books were everything, but we took them very much for granted. So renowned was my grandfather’s indiscriminate bibliophilia that, after his death, an artist turned a portion of his collection into a bookmobile-cum-installation.
We Americans are often very awed by the idea of private libraries, seeing them as something highly aspirational rather than notional. I would never claim to have a library, but, by the same token, I have never lived in a home where every room didn’t contain books: beloved, beautiful, unread, ugly, scavenged, and collected. Books soften and personalize a space like nothing else; they add instant color and life. And, as long as you have them, you have to find a way to display them—especially now that physical books are something of an optional anachronism.
The Milanese home office of designer Paolo Castellarin, featured in ELLE Decor’s April 2022 issue.
I thought about this when I recently came across a new offering from the publisher Assouline. Their new Library Collection is, essentially, all the bits and bobs that finish a book room: a bookstand for your 1930s guide to conifers of North America; bookends to elevate those fabulous midcentury classics with their garish pulp covers (am I projecting?). There is also the paraphernalia of our collective Carlos Ruiz Zafón fantasies: magnifying glasses and backgammon sets and, of course, candles evocative of leather and vellum. All the set pieces, in fact, for the life of leisure most of us can only dream of. (In my personal fantasies I have the glass-fronted shelves popularized by J.P. Morgan, still the most practical and efficient means of preserving books.)
Yet I have seen many an Ikea shelf transformed by paint, a wall-papered backing, some braid and ribbon along the out-facing boards. (In truth, all these things were done by me.) And there is nothing wrong with a large stack of books. It can make a good coffee table, render a Zoom background flattering, and result in a dramatic landslide that adds excitement to a Tuesday. I routinely use certain art books as trivets, and not because I don’t love them. I take the advice of Nina Freudenberger, author of Bibliostyle: “Used books, loved books, and read books—books that aren’t just display, but part of your life, are critical in making a library beautiful.”
Just “please don’t arrange by color,” pleads Rebecca Garner of online design shop Houses and Parties. “Look to the cozy libraries of elementary school for inspiration. Organize by subject and alphabetize.” I’ve always been inclined to agree—but it should be said that the best-read person of my acquaintance, a prominent literary critic, was the first one I ever knew to do a book rainbow, and he could locate every single book on his shelves.
Spine-in shelving is another trend—but then, the objects are beautiful, and there’s something to be said for a fan of ivory and sepia. Alice Engel, the design director at New York’s Studio McGrath, counters: “Spines must be aligned and at the very front edge of the shelf, not pushed in.”
While I try to avoid prescriptions on anything so personal as the curation of a private library, I do draw the line at fake books, those dollhouse bindings with blank pages. Buying books by the yard (as opposed to curated libraries, an art) I find alien but not necessarily damning—serendipity can make for the best of all reading experiences, as anyone who has stayed in a rental house knows.
Simply put: Never be intimidated. Collecting is just accumulation by another name. Grab anything that looks interesting to you: beautiful volumes, coverless laundry room giveaways, library discards. You never know who you might be at 4 p.m., and what that person might want to read. ◾
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Elle Decor. SUBSCRIBE
