The Book on the Bookshelf (ISBN 0375706399)

Amazon.com Review:
Consider the book. Though Goodnight Moon and Finnegans Wake differ considerably in content and intended audience, they do share some basic characteristics. They have pages, they're roughly the same shape, and whether in a bookstore, library, or private home, they are generally stored vertically on shelves. Indeed, this is so much the norm that in these days of high-tech printing presses and chain bookstores, it's easy to believe that the book, like the cockroach, remains much the same as it ever was. But as Henry Petroski makes abundantly clear in Book on the Bookshelf, books as we know them have had a long and complex evolution. Indeed, he takes us from the scroll to the codex to the hand-lettered illuminated texts that were so rare and valuable they were chained to lecterns to prevent theft. Along the way he provides plenty of amusing anecdotes about libraries (according to one possibly apocryphal account, the library at Alexandria borrowed the works of the great Greek authors from Athens, had them copied, and then sent the copies back, keeping the originals), book collectors, and the care of books. Book-lover though he may be, however, Henry Petroski is, first and foremost, an engineer and so, in the end, it is the evolution of bookshelves even more than of books that fascinates him. Pigeonholes for scrolls, book presses containing thousands of chained volumes, rotating lecterns that allowed scholars to peruse more than one book at a time--these are just a few of the ingenious methods readers have devised over the centuries for storing their books: "in cabinets beneath the desks, on shelves in front of them, in triangular attic-like spaces formed under the back-to-back sloped surfaces of desktops or small tabletop lecterns that rested upon a horizontal surface." Placing books vertically on shelves, spines facing outward, is a fairly recent invention, it would seem. Well written as it is, if Book on the Bookshelf were only about books-as-furniture, it would have little appeal to the general reader. Petroski, however, uses this treatise on design to examine the very human motivations that lie behind it. From the example of Samuel Pepys, who refused to have more titles than his library could hold (about 3,000), to an appendix detailing all the ways people organize their collections (by sentimental value, by size, by color, and by price, to name a few of the more unconventional methods), Petroski peppers his account with enough human interest to keep his audience reading from cover to cover. --Alix Wilber

Got Bookshelves? Ever Think About Them?:
I enjoyed this meticulously researched history of the physical design of books, bookshelves and libraries. Petroski follows the evolution of book storage from pigeonholes used to store scrolls to modern space-saving "moveable-aisle" stacks. In the process, he also covers the changes in the physical design of books themselves and the ever-present challenges faced by libraries throughout the ages as more and more books appear on their shelves. An appendix covers a host of possible methods of organizing your personal book collection - this section is easily the most amusing part of the book. Petroski includes interesting anecdotes and helpful illustrations to liven up this sometimes dry subject area. While not a gripping book, it definitely succeeds as a thoughtful study full of interesting nuggets of history. It's obvious that obsessive book lovers throughout the ages have put a lot of thought into storing their collections. If you're not particularly interested in why books were once shelved spine in, or how library layouts have changed over the years, then this book will probably not hold your interest. Personally, I have fond and vivid memories of libraries, especially the one from my childhood. This book definitely has me looking at libraries in a whole new light - I'll never be able to walk into one again without studying the way it's laid out.

Windy and boring:
I'm as fascinated by history and technology as the next person, but this book seems to be an overstretched monograph, marked by redundancy and needless recitation. Properly edited, the story of the bookshelf would take far fewer pages. There is no reason to cite nine examples to prove that rows of lecterns with books chained to them were common c1600, for example. I'm willing to try other titles by this author--he is curious about interesting things and writes readably--but the subject matter here doesn't fill a book, in my opinion.

Discursive history of book shelving:
Although this volume contains much fascinating information about the evolution of the book, Petroski is most interested in how book storage systems have developed. It turns out that books have been stored in more ways--and in more peculiar ways--than an uninitiated reader might imagine. (Would you believe that most books were once shelved "backwards" with their fore-edge out and their title-less spine faced in?) Among Petroski's best chapters are the one that treats problems that arose when books had to be chained to their shelves and the one describing the development of modern library shelving so strong that it could support the library rather than the other way around. Petroski includes many fine illustrations that that well support his theses and educated guesses. Committed bibliophiles may easily tolerate the discursive, not to say meandering, course of The Book on the Bookshelf. I reached the limit of my patience a couple of times and put the book back on the bookshelf for a while before finally completing it. That having been said, Petroski's ramble is just too self-indulgent and just plain too long, sort of an Atlantic Monthly essay that got away from the author. I absolve future readers from all guilt if they decide to skip pages and even whole sections of this clever work.

Shelve it:
Great title, great cover. But not worth a book. The history of the bookshelf is interesting, sort of, but this entire book could have been made more interesting by compressing it into two or three articles, max, in, say, The New Yorker or The Atlantic. That's why those magazines exist. This book is only about 230 pages of text, not including the appendix, etc., but even at that it is too long. The subject just doesn't warrant it.

I really, really wanted to like this book...:
...but it was just so unrelentingly dull. Even the interesting parts (Anatomy books bound in HUMAN FLESH!) were dull, or presented in a fashion that made them dull. The detail was exquisite, but the presentation was...not. And some of the descriptions of avid book collectors and their manners of storing, arranging, and displaying their books made me want to back away, very slowly, towards the nearest exit. For anyone interested in the history of books and the ways in which they have been stored, I recommend this book for the wealth of information it provides. It's a pity it couldn't be presented in a more interesting manner.