Branch manager Lynne sent me this photo the other day of a cool chair she encountered in her travels – the seat and back are made from paperback books. While I’m still undecided about how comfortable such a chair might be, it got me thinking about book furniture. Further research seems to indicate that building furniture out of books is kind of a thing — I’m really digging this bookstore counter made of stacked books, although I don’t think stacking up books and calling them side tables counts – nice try, Real Simple.
While you’re contemplating book chairs, why not check out some books with chairs in the title?
For grown-ups, there’s Sue Monk Kidd’s Mermaid Chair at the Montclair branch, and further afield you can find chair treatises like The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design by Galen Cranz at Rockridge or Please Be Seated: The Evolution of the Chair, 2000 BC-2000 AD by Marvin D. Schwartz at Main.
Also at other branches, you’ll find more tenuously chair-related books like The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook by Rachel Saunders (Rockridge and others); Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch (Lakeview and others); and Hemingway’s Chair by Michael Palin (Rockridge).
Kid’s books featuring chairs at the Montclair branch include:
Peter’s Chair by Ezra Jack Keats
A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams
The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
Down the Back of the Chair by Margaret Mahy
A Chair for Always by Vera B. Williams
Bears on Chairs by Shirley Parenteau
And elsewhere in the OPL system you’ll find My Chair by Betsy James and The Seven Chairs by Helen Lanteigne.
Now go find a comfy chair (made of books or not) and start reading!
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