Rating: 
Summary: Discursive history of book shelving
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: An entertaining look at a boring topic
Review: As I was reading this book, my partner turned to me.
"What are you reading?" he asked.
"A book about the evolution of bookshelves," I replied.
The look on his face left me no doubt that he could not imagine a more boring topic, and I think that many people would sympathize with his reaction.
However, Petroski writes a light and entertaining book which looks at the evolution of the bookshelf from a secured trunk for carrying scrolls to the bookshelfs that we have today. It is a very quick read (too quick for an entire book, perhaps) and except for a few sections that were a little bit heavy on the engineering, it never felt boring at all to me.
Potentially interesting for people who like: books, library history, or technological evolution.
Rating:
Summary: For Book Lovers, with Some Reservations
Review: Henry Petroski's The Book on the Bookshelf traces the evolution of how books were and are stored from the time they were scrolls into modern libraries with movable shelving. There are many interesting facts throughout this book. One of its great joys is picturing a reader, like yourself, in earlier times and imagining them prowling through a bookshop set up in an entirely different fashion than is done in a bookstore now (and that is not even taking into account such places as ... where there are no book shelves for the reader to see). The only drawback to the book is that sometimes the writing and the subject can be a little dry and grow stale, particulary as the story goes on. Still, it is filled with much interesting information.
Rating:
Summary: You'll never look at your library in the same way again
Review: I came across Henry Petrosky's "The book on the bookshelf" when I was researching re-decorating options for my own library; and bought it, thinking I was buying just another work on general booklore and memorabilia. What an agreeable surprise when I discovered this is not such a book, but an exploration on the evolution of the bookshelf. For someone like me at that point in time, it was kismet. Petroski takes us from the earliest historical evidence of the existence of bookshelves and libraries; exploring ancient lands, such as Egypt and the great lost library of Alexandria, the storing of scrolls in Ancient Rome, the chained manuscripts that monks copied and sweated over for months during the Middle Ages; to our modern computerized systems. Library design is studied and analyzed to the last detail using as examples the oldest, most celebrated libraries of our time, such as Oxford's Bodleian Library, Spain's El Escorial, the Vatican Library, and our very own Library of Congress. He even dares to imagine the "library of the future", fully digitalized, with computers at the base of each set of book stacks at the user's disposal for fast, easy researching of titles. He writes as a scientist and his ability to create a resolutely valid hypothesis out of what many would call an insignificant theme is remarkable. The book closes with an appendix on myriad methods on how to organize one's own private library bookshelves, an extended bibliography, and a full reference list of excellent engravings, blueprints and photos reproduced throughout. As a booklover and collector, I found "The book on the bookshelf" interesting and with a fresh point of view on a usually languid, most talked about subject.
Rating:
Summary: Got Bookshelves? Ever Think About Them?
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Windy and boring
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Good on engineering, less so on the rest
Review: Petroski's guided tour through the history of books and bookshelves is most interesting when it focuses on what the author knows best: engineering. His discussions of Dewey's "golden mean" of shelf design, the pros and cons of movable shelving, and the arcane mysteries of bookstack engineering are particularly insightful. The appendix on the various ways of ordering a book collection is also very good. Less appealing is the plainly historical material which reads like a litany of not-so-interesting facts. The best popular historians give much more emphasis to anecdote, character and the requirements of storytelling as a way of making dry material engaging. Petroski tries, but he's never less successful than when he attempts to be lyrical or funny. There are also what appear to be a few pompous snipes at colleagues and (former) friends which, without exception, fall embarrassingly flat. Nevertheless, this book still appeals and is a useful contribution to an often neglected field. There are few books which can have you thinking about the object in your hands, or the shelf you just pulled it from, and realising that while both might seem completely obvious and 'natural', they stand, in fact, at the end of a long history of technical innovation.
Rating:
Summary: A book for obsessive bibliophiles
Review: The Book on the Bookshelf is Henry Petroski's sly look at how books are stored, and have been stored for centuries. It's sly, in part, because to tell you this he has to tell you the history of the book itself, and this of course leads him off in different directions. You learn much about not only books, and bookshelves, but scrolls, printing, various sorting systems, printing and spelling conventions over the years, and various other minutiae. If you're interested in this sort of thing, like I was, it's very interesting. I was fascinated to read, for instance, that the British publishing industry changed about a decade ago, and began printing their titles on the spines of books oriented the same way we do it. Previously they had printed the titles upside down (from our point of view) and the two books I'm referring to are old enough to display this. I'd noted it, but never knew why they were like that. Now I do. I'd recommend this book to anyone who's interested in books, publishing, and the history of those things. I will warn you that the author does tend to get into his subject, digress a bit, and run away with his topic now and again, but I generally found this characteristic charming rather than annoying.
Rating: 
Summary: Strongly recommended for inquiring (and obsessive) minds
Review: There is a certain kind of personality that will absolutely adore this book, although it seems to have flummoxed some of the author's loyalists. (It is not a treatise on engineering and design.) The title is very much literal: This is a book about the history and evolution of that simple piece of furniture, the bookshelf. That seems almost comical--like /Seinfeld/'s coffee table book about coffee tables--and most people to whom I have described the book's appeal have understandably laughed. But the bookshelf per se is only one aspect of Petroski's undertaking here. This is really a book about books--the peculiar allure of the written word, the history of publishing, and the mania that affects those who strangely view books as metaphysically more valuable than the sum of all knowledge contained therein. In all of these subjects Petroski's book is rich, but I imagine it will appeal most to those who understand that mania. Some of the author's observations regarding the bizarre obsessive-compulsiveness of book-collectors are humorous and even poetic in their tendency to articulate beautifully the quotidian chores of library maintenance.P>The beef of the book is in the middle chapters, which is an engaging and fast-paced history of manuscripts, books, publishing, and of course the bookshelf's evolution in service of these changing technologies. Numerous woodcuts and illustrations are included, although the text begins to drag in places where Petroski wastes words needlessly describing the contents of the graphic in front of us. These chapters contain a history nearly as intriguing as Nicholas Basbanes's highly recommended and still-in-progress trilogy on the history and allure of the printed word, and are far more concise for those wont to balk at such mammoth volumes. Those whose interests tend more towards the artisanal aspects of printing and bookmaking can supplement Petroski's text with any of the various visually oriented undertakings of this subject, e.g. Joseph Blumenthal's /Art of the Printed Book, 1455-1955/. The last chapter and the appendix return to the acute observational musings of the first chapter. The perhaps unintentionally hilarious appendix on the elusiveness of the perfect system of book-categorization cites more of the problems encountered by the irredeemably meticulous. If thoughts of a paperback amidst a row of hardcovers or a short book in a tall space can agonize you like an unmade bed, this chapter was written for you. More arcane systems are discussed, such as shelving books according to color, sentimental value, new vs. used, read vs. unread, and so on, each section noting more of the little disruptions in harmony that make keeping books such an eternal work in progress.
Rating:
Summary: if you're not bored by the concept
Review: This is a book about the history of the bookshelf. It also covers some history of books. Not the literature of books, but the manufacturing and design of the actual paper and cover. If that idea doesn't bore you to death then this is a very well written book. It will definitely tell you an awful lot about bookshelves, and if that doesn't scare you then you might want to read this book.
|
