Bookshelves Tour: Cat

In elementary school, I had one shelf on my half of the room because I shared a kinda small room with my middle brother, and it started out with only the bottom having books on it. Then slowly into middle school my collection grew to take up most of the shelf, and I hated this shelf. It was plain pale wood with no back so things would constantly fall through and it had been with me since I was a wee little child and children, you guessed it, draw all over things. So it was also covered in my terrible doodles and writing from years past.

I desperately tried time and time again to get my dad to build me some new shelves or or buy me one or something because I hated that thing so much that I have an aversion to pale wood furniture even now. But no, that shelf stayed with me through high school and my collection of books grew so overwhelming I moved all of my favorites over onto my dresser and made it look nice there while all of the rest were just strewn about on that ugly old thing that I hated so much.

In my last few years of high school I acquired a futon, a really nice one too, that had storage underneath, which resulted in my shoving all of my older books I didn't touch anymore in there. But I had this need to show off my books, I just had nowhere but my dresser top to do it! And even that was quite limited space with not many arrangement options.

Then I went to college and brought my absolute all time favorites which I put in a plastic three drawer container and even then I outgrew that with my history textbooks and other books from ongoing series that I was preordering and random books I'd pick up at the used book store. My to be read stack grew a mile high on my radiator in front of my window and when I graduated it sat on the overlarge desk in my room at our new apartment.

Old Shelf 1

We moved again, and I had a bit more space, but my books still overflowed the small shelf that had come with the apartment. So, for Christmas this past year, my dad bought my two bookshelves from Ikea, and he helped me build one before he had to go home. I was exhausted so I went to sleep, and the next night after work I went home and built the other one at midnight and lifted it up on my own, against my father's explicit command that I not move it on my own.

Old Shelf 2

They were full immediately.

Then we moved again, and I got a better room and a bigger mattress and my own writing desk and I had boxes of books stacked in the corner and my collection kept growing. So around my birthday my dad bought me two more of the same shelves which I once again built past midnight, this time while watching the new Hellboy movie, with a full heart, knowing that my books would be on display and safe from the dangers of being stacked haphazardly.

New Shelf 1

But still, they ended up put randomly in the shelves and I kept just sticking books where I could and not really organizing it beyond putting series' together.

New Shelf 2 & 3 And a bit of a mess in the bottom right, apologies 😂

Then I found out we were doing this series and I jumped on the opportunity to force myself to organize them and make them look nice and pretty! And I managed to do just that! I pulled everything down and organized them by author/series and scattered my bookish goodies all around in what I hope is a nice fashion.

New Shelf # 4 and a bit of a peak at my desk in the left

And now here they are, as I have them in these pictures! Now I know the rest of TAC probably didn't give like, a life story to their bookshelves, but it's honestly pretty important to my bookshelf journey, so I thought I would share!

Here's a couple close ups at my favorite sections, which I though it'd be nice to look at!

This is my near complete collection of signed copies by my fave author, V.E. Schwab, who is an absolute angel! City of Ghosts is on my bedside table because I'm reading it right now!

And here's my collection of exclusive signed books from subscription boxes! Mostly Owlcrate, but there's one Illumicrate in there at the beginning, and a Shelflove Crate towards the end, and at the very end, is the Fairyloot edition of The Beautiful.

I've found Owlcrate to be the best and most reliable so if you're looking for an introduction into YA book boxes, that's a good start! I like to have special copies of books I know I love and am already preordering at our store, so it's a little treat for myself since books are my favorite thing in the world. But I don't let myself have too many books that I have multiple copies of because I don't have that much room!

Anyways, those are my shelves, constantly growing, constantly getting too overfilled for their own good! Look forward to some more tours in the next couple of months! We'd love to hear about yours too!