"I can’t imagine what it will be like for future generations not to experience getting to know someone by scanning their bookshelves, learning, by their lovingly worn condition, which novels they read over and over and over, and, by their perfectly unbroken spines, which their best intentions never quite got them to. Finding out that sometimes they needed a good mystery or thriller, or that they went through a serious Faulkner phase by spotting all those matching Vintage paperback editions lined up in a row."

thebronzemedal, in reaction to Kevin Hartnett’s article on bookshelves

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I want to live here.

misplacedmemory:

garyoldman | les autres | Ohio Memory | feuilleton

Interior of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County “Old Main” Building, photographer unknown, 1874.

In 1874 the Public Library of Cincinnati took possession of a small building intended to be an opera house. According to John Fleishman, “the parcel at 629 Vine Street was transformed in two stages into a library building that startled America with its cutting edge design. Its vast Main Hall featured five tiers of cast-iron book alcoves that could house over 200,000 volumes.”

(via fyeakbookshelves)