When we moved to our new apartment a year ago, the one major thing that was lacking was shelf space. Now I’m not the best person when it comes to interior design. Somehow I’m a little bit too logical and practical and always go for the solution which makes sense space and money wise. And of course the same happened here.

I bought a huge bookcase from IKEA (120cm wide, 40cm deep and 192cm high) which could fit 3 rows of books on one shelf. Awesome, I thought. Very space efficient and the maximum cost vs shelf space solution. But it was really way too large and bulky; it took too much space up and actually only fitted on one spot in the entire house. Plus there were 2 rows of books which I couldn’t see or reach! I’m enough of a book addict that I want to SEE my lovely books.

So when we realised that we needed a new mattress we thought we might as just as well order a couple of new book cases. I actually went for the same IKEA system, but ones that were half as deep (only 20cm vs 40cm):

These are perfect for my books! I need a couple more shelves, but I love how flat these shelves are. I’ve got 3 bookcases now in total (the 2 you see above and exactly the same one against another wall) and there’s most than space for all my books.

The bookcase is £35 on IKEA and comes in 4 colours.

As I said in previous posts, I’ve got some catching up to do with old blog posts. Remember I organized a Blogger’s Secret Santa last December? Well, I ended up getting this wonderful book:

Awesome, right? I still haven’t had time to read it, but it contains some of the essential Philip K. Dick stories: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which Blade Runner is based on), Martian Time Slip, Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and A Scanner Darkly.

Thanks, Secret Santa!

My arm is finally starting to feel better, and I’m slowly getting back to sitting longer behind my laptop. It’s still not completely healed, but it’s much, much better than the past couple of weeks. I’ve got so many blog posts to catch up on: my final movie and book reviews of 2009, the Secret Santa I organized and more.

Here are some short review of books I read last year:

A Song of Ice and Fire – George R R Martin

Ages ago I tried reading A Game of Thrones and just couldn’t get through it. When I heard HBO was making a TV show out of them I knew I had to give them another try. Maybe I was too young the 1st time around, cause this time around I loved the books. The story, the characters, the world, everything is so detailed and built up, I think I might be spoilt for other series. I still have to read the fourth book (A Feast For Crows), but the first three are amazing.

I’m now so looking forward to the HBO show, I just hope they get this right. This is the type of fantasy TV show I’ve been hoping for; something that’s more like a costume drama, just not set in our world.

A Game of Thrones (UK, US), A Clash of Kings (UK, US), A Storm of Swords (Book 1 UK, Book 2 UK, US), A Feast For Crows (UK, US).

The Nightwalkers  - Jacquelyn Frank

I really enjoyed these books, it’s again a cool different type of world. In this case it’s set in our world, but with demons, vampires and shapeshifters. The demons (with which the series starts) are the most interesting species with the characters each having elemental powers. The series starts off pretty cool, with some revelations being made over the demons and their back history. There are 5 books in the Nightwalkers series (Jacob, Gideon, Elijah, Damien, Noah) from Jacquelyn Frank. The story continues in her next series Shadowdwellers, about the 4th species in that world, but these 5 form a complete story.

Jacob (UK, US), Gideon (UK, US), Elijah (UK, US), Damien (UK, US), Noah (UK, US)

The Black Magician Trilogy – Trudi Canavan

I read this series a couple of years ago… and absolutely hated it. Well, I liked the premise, but somehow at the time I just didn’t like the ending. Re-reading it now though makes me realize how your tastes do change through the years. This time around I loved every bit of it.

The trilogy is about Sonea, a young girl who lives in the slums and finds out she has magical abilities. But as long as the city can remember only people from the upper classes have been found with magic and have gone on to train at the Guild. The first book drags on a bit and it only really becomes interesting once Sonea is actually at the Guild learning her powers. There are some cool concepts in here, like the way the magic works.

The Magician’s Guild (UK, US), The Novice (UK, US), The High Lord (UK, US)

Heart Fate – Robin D. Owens

The 7th book in the Heart series from Robin D. Owens. I didn’t love this book as much as some of the previous ones, but still an enjoyable read. Heart Fate is about Tinne Holly, the younger brother of Holm Holly (who was the hero in book 3) and his heart mate Lahsin Yew.

Heart Fate (UK, US)

Fire Study – Maria V Snyder

I loved Poison Study and Magic Study (the first two book from this series) and had been looking forward to their conclusion for ages. I won’t say anything about the plot, cause I’d otherwise spoil the first two books too much. Yelena is a great character and it’s cool to see how much she grows during the series.

I liked Fire Study, but somehow at the same time I was a bit disappointed by it. I think I just wanted it to be more than it was; with characters and a world this rich, I was expecting a grand emotional finale. It’s sort of there, but it’s missing that special something that makes me fall in love with a book.

Fire Study (UK, US)

The Rogue Hunter, The Immortal Hunter – Lynsay Sands

Two books from Lynsay Sands’ new Rogue Hunter series; it’s basically a continuation of the Argeneau series (same world, same recurring characters) only she ran out of Argeneau family members to write about.

The first books from the Argeneau series were hilarious, they’re the funniest romance books I’ve read. But the last couple ones… meh. They’re still okay, but I’m missing the funny in them. The Rogue Hunter has some cute moments in it, but most of the plot is pretty boring. The Immortal Hunter, however, gets interesting again, setting up a new main storyline and mystery. I can’t wait to see how this continues.

The Rogue Hunter (UK, US), The Immortal Hunter (UK, US)

The Tamir Triad – Lynn Flewelling

I’m a fan of Flewelling’s other series, The Nightrunners, and was curious to see more of one of the stories we heard about in there. This trilogy takes place a couple of hundred years earlier, when the country Skala is being ruled by an usurper king. For Skala to prosper though, there must always be a Queen on the throne, so the current king is secretly murdering his own female king to protect his own reign. Following prophecy, two wizards spellbound a princess at birth, with a glamour to disguise her, making her look like her dead (sacrificed) brother. The girl grows up believing she’s a boy…

The premise of this book is pretty unique, yet without interesting characters this could have failed completely. The characters and the world that Flewelling has created are fascinating; I sped so quickly through these books, I just wanted to know what happened to them as quick as possible. Great books, I recommend them to anyone who wants a cool new fantasy world.

The Bone Doll’s Twin (UK, US), Hidden Warrior (UK, US), The Oracle’s Queen (UK, US)

The Summoning Series – Robin D. Owens

I read the first two books of this series in early 2009 and finally got around half a year later to finish this series. The books are about the world of Lladrana, where forces of darkness have invaded. The different factions of the world resort to their final option: Summoning their prophesied saviours from the Exotique land aka Earth.

Each book is about the summoning of a human to this strange world where they each discover they have magical abilities. What I loved about these books was how unpredictable they were; they didn’t follow the standard romance formula. Plus it’s got a great fantasy story with lots of magic and talking hamster!

Protector of the Flight (US), Keepers of the Flame (US), Echoes in the Dark (US)

I’ve never really gotten the whole Moleskin thing. I mean, I love notebooks and own tons of them, but I’ve never seen the appeal of specifically the Moleskin notebooks. They don’t seem any more special than any other notebook, right?

Well, this line of Moleskins might just convince me to finally get one. They came out last year October some time, but somehow I managed to miss them. The Passion Moleskin collection is specially designed for your life passions; so far, there are six different categories: Book, Film, Music, Recipes, Wine and Wellness. Each journal has dedicated pages for the different passions. For example, Recipes has 6 separate sections for appetizers, first courses, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, cocktails, while Film has alphabetically organized sections to fill in.

I do like the idea of these, but I still would really want to see these in real life before getting one. Especially the Film and the Book ones seem appropriate for me, but I wonder how the pages exactly look like and how they’ve been labeled.

Each of the journals are available on the Moleskin website for £15.99.

I love love love this! This was posted ages ago on Boing Boing and various other sites, but it’s worth a repeat for those of you who mightn’t have seen it. It would fit perfectly in my sitting room:

Designed by Marcos Breder.

Another book of which I haven’t even read it’s predecessor yet (The Shadow Queen), but which I’m already coveting:

Shalador’s Lady is the fifth stand-alone book after Anne Bishop’s Black Jewel’s trilogy. It will be released in March 2010.

I’ve blogged about one of these type of bookcases before, and I still love the idea of a bit of personal space within the shelves where you can curl up and read you book. Also, loving the little coffee mug shelf!

Via The Blog on the Bookshelf

I got my first Secret Santa present a couple of days ago for one of the Book Bloggers Secret Santas I’m participating in:

The Lion of Ireland from Morgan Llywelyn! Thank you, Secret Santa. I have no idea who sent this to me, but I know I’m going to like it. I can’t wait to find out what my Secret Santa person thinks of what they’ll receive.

From the designer’s website:

The strings of the book-harp are a play of light and statics, three-dimensional picture and bookend, transparent and complete simultaneously. Depending on the angle of the literary instrument it seems once closed, sometimes translucent – and turns to life upon passing. It captures the passer-by at the corner of his eye and draws attention to itself, the variegated content, or out into the sky.

I do like the look of this, would love to have a flat with something like this built in:

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danieleski – $13.57 on Amazon.com, £16.49 on Amazon.co.uk, £16.48 on Book Depository

I got my brother this book last year and it’s pretty amazing. I still have to read it, but my brother was addicted to it the moment he laid eyes on it.

Here’s the description from Amazon:

Johnny Truant, a wild and troubled sometime employee in a LA tattoo parlour, finds a notebook kept by Zampano, a reclusive old man found dead in a cluttered apartment. Herein is the heavily annotated story of the Navidson Report. Will Navidson, a photojournalist, and his family move into a new house. What happens next is recorded on videotapes and in interviews. Now the Navidsons are household names. Zampano, writing on loose sheets, stained napkins, crammed notebooks, has compiled what must be the definitive work on the events on Ash Tree Lane. But Johnny Truant has never heard of the Navidson Record. Nor has anyone else he knows. And the more he reads about Will Navidson’s house, the more frightened he becomes.

From what I understand it’s a story within a story. You get to read Johnny’s experiences as he tries to uncover what happened, yet at the same time you’re reading the actual Navidson Report that Johnny is reading.

Besides that though the book is full of interesting elements to make the reading experience unique. For starters, the words in the book are arranged to echo the feeling of the what is written. When characters are navigating a claustrophobic maze-like sections of the house’s interior, the text is dense, confusingly packed into small corners of each page. Later, when a character is running desperately from something, there are only a few words on each page for almost 25 pages, causing the reader to flip quickly through the pages to frantically figure out what happened next.

Another example is the font choices. Each narrative of each separate person has a different font, with the main character in Courier, another in Times, and two others in Bookman and Dante. Also the colour of certain words are changed, although this depends on which version of the book you have (there are 4 versions: black/white, blue, red, and full colour).

What intrigued me the most though was that there are also secret hidden messages in the book. Stuff like taking the first letters from sentences to form a secret message. I still haven’t read it myself, so I have no idea how much of these codes are in there, but I love the idea behind it.

If you’re looking for something unique to give at Christmas, this is a great book. It’s perfect for the person who likes complex stories and figuring out things. Also: cool for the designer in your life, or anyone who likes typography.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danieleski – $13.57 on Amazon.com, £16.49 on Amazon.co.uk, £16.48 on Book Depository