Posted in Chatty

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Stuff I Want

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish question idea that was originally created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, from way back in June 2010! Since January 2018, Top Ten Tuesday has been hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Thanks for taking it over! The idea is to make a list of ten books or bookish things on different topics each week. Check out her site for details on how to join and what the upcoming prompts are. 😊 You can also see all the posts from other bloggers linked on each weekly post on their main site.

This week’s prompt is for bookish merchandise you’d (I’d) like to own. Admittedly, I’m not really intersted in most of the stuff people seem to get for bookish merch, especially the little knick knacks and decor that come in a lot of book sub boxes. That would just be clutter to me and get tossed in the bin. But below are a few things I might actually be willing to make room for in my in-progress library.

These gorgeous honeycomb bookshelves

I’m absolutely WILD for these bookshelves, and have been building my entire library vision around them. Unfortunately (for MUCH more reason than my personal inconvenience), the creator lives in Ukraine and is dealing with much more pressing matters right now with the Russian invasion. The store is HexagonicaEtsy, and you can purchase donation items through Etsy to support the seller while they cannot run their business.

These fake books to cover up clutter

Remember how I mentioned I hate clutter? Well if you haven’t noticed, I *also* love books. So this is a little wooden thing with cut out books surrounding it that can nicely house cables and whatever other crap I need to have on or around my desk, but would really rather not look at. And now I can look at much nicer more stylish decor. ^.^

Badass / Lovely bookends

I’m in need of some big heavy items to hold the ends of my books, and to separate sections in between rows. Right now I have bricks that I painted at a craft night in college. Don’t get me wrong, I love those and they aren’t going ANYWHERE. But maybe I can also upgrade a little bit to something nice, too.

A Book Nook

Note that this is conspicuously NOT a Diagon Alley book nook, which seems to be 90% of the ones that exist. My issue with the book nooks is that they all seem to come unpainted and sometimes unassembled. I’m not artistic and I don’t like assembling finicky things, so that rules them out completely for me. Maybe I can get my boyfriend to put one together for me…

Bookmarks! With Dragons! That glow in the dark!

The problem with this, perhaps obviously, is that I’m never reading a physical book in the dark. How could I? So maybe the glow in the dark aspect isn’t exactly the most necessary haha. But I still love it without that element, and being able to peek at it on the shelf in the evening would still be cool. The other issue is that I tend to use whatever lazy crap is around for a bookmark, instead of my growing collection of actually cool bookmarks. Note the bookjigs I adore…

Decorated Dictionary Pages

What’s better than words? Words on words! I love these paintings on dictionary pages, because I get to enjoy art, a memory, something beautiful and/or funny, PLUS I get to see whatever words are on my page. One of the preview photos I saw included the word “venereal” which made me giggle a lot. The Shakespeare one is on a page from the play, too!

Book page ornaments

My boyfriend is very into having a Christmas tree that’s white lights only, with a carefully matching set of ornaments. I’m slowly blowing that up by adding whatever random ornaments I happen to like, get as gifts, buy as souveniers, etc. This would go perfectly with it! It’s ribbons of pages and the seller has book pages from a wide variety (Eragon, The Grapes of Wrath, A Room of One’s Own, A Court of Mist and Fury…)

Comfy ass chair

Some kind of super comfy chair would be great. I have an old butterfly wing chair I ADORED (and frankly, still do) but I also want to see what other fun options are around. This looks neat and cozy, but also probably isn’t great for my posture haha. So Maybe not this exact one, but a big comfy chair of some kind would be lovely.

Transparent sticky flags

This is a pretty simple thing that is frankly really not out of my reach, I just haven’t bothered to get them. Maybe I’ll do that after this post. I want a way to highlight or remember lines in my book that I enjoyed, but I hate when using a sticky note or flag ends up covering some of the text. These ones are transparent, apparently, so I can note the passage without having to lose some of the other text.

A Book on a Blanket (or scarf, shirt, etc)

You can print an entire book on a blanket. Or scarf. Or t shirt. Etc. They have a bunch of pre-selected titles, or you can use your own text. I actually have this in mind as a gift for someone else, rather than myself, but I love the idea and think it’s a cool offering fora debut author (or an experienced one!). Litographs does the custom ones, but Storiarts has some really nice options that include special designs for each title as well as the text.

HOLY CRAP I DID IT. Honestly, finding ten things was a challenge because I don’t usually track this stuff. The bookshelves were the only thing I immediately thought of, and the rest required research. xD Would y’all go for any of these items, or do you know of some that should be on my list? 🙂

Author:

Reader, traveler, photographer, and always looking to learn!

36 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Stuff I Want”

    1. I loved your quote about the enemies to lovers trope! And the dictionary pages are things I see again like every few years and think oh right, those are still cool. But I never actually get one. xD Maybe someday

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    1. Yeah I realized as I was going through that I have a definite aesthetic hahaha. The new World of Warcraft expansion also came out confirmed to be Dragonflight today, so I have a lot of dragons on the brain today!

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    1. Yeah haha it doesn’t seem necessarily practical, but I guarantee I would occasionally stop reading for a moment to cup it in my hands, peek in at it, and smile. ^.^

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  13. Some brilliant stuff there that I have to add to my wishlist. That bookshelf is absolutely adorable but I’m afraid I lack the space for yet another one. But the books that hide clutter are fabulous. I really could do with them. Fantastic idea.

    And I wish you all the best with “enhancing” your Christmas tree. I am sure you will find more bookish related ornaments that are sort of white. Good luck!

    I already have a shawl with Pride & Prejudice, one of the presents my son gave to me. I absolutely love it. And it’s really quite warm.

    Thanks for visiting my TTT this week where I posted about the bookish merchandise I already own because there are so many bookish items I’d love.

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    1. Agreed, the fake books to hide miscellaneous things could be a desk-saver. xD I’m at the start of my library creation, so choosing the right bookshelves feels like so much pressure! I hope these are the ones ^.^

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      1. When we started our lives together, hubby and me bought a lot of stuff at Ikea and we are happy we did because you can still buy the same shelves now, forty years later. Having said that, this one here will certainly be an eye-catcher no matter what you will match it with.

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