Leaning books-shelf!

Mayank Gupta
4 min readMay 23, 2021

--

Not only aesthetically creative but also a better product design.

A white pyramid shape slanting bookshelf
https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/creative-bookshelves/

Lat year I was shopping for a new bookshelf for my room. And this time I wanted something a little unique so it could also form the backdrop for my video calls in the zoom era.

I scrolled Pinterest for hours only to find that most artistic shapes had little practical use. However one idea really stuck in my mind from all those designs. A shelf to place books at a slanting angle; interestingly this is a great way to place your books.

Why. Lets put your engineering minds to the analysis.

Vertical Shelves

These are the most commonly used shelves in libraries or stores around the world. Also these are the ones with the most practical way for placing a ton of books.

But…

Last book isn’t standing

The books at the end of the line need a support. It could be maybe from an adjacent rack or a bookend holder to prevent the books at the end of the row from falling flat on the rack.

get it here https://amzn.to/3wrZA99

Gravity

is putting a lot of pressure on the spine of the book due to the weight of its pages. This is not as much of a concern for smaller paperbacks; but as the books increase in size or hardcovers come into picture, the spine starts tearing from the top of the book.

A book with its spine damaged from the top.
The spine starts tearing from the top of the book due to the torsional force of its weight

Dog-ears.

The enthusiasts will also complain about the bottom corners of the pages being flexed; or

While there can be many other reasons like moisture and repeated use responsible for this condition, but any book placed loosely in a vertical shelf, will become like this over time.

The bottom right corner is the first one to suffer from the damage.

Which brings us to the second obvious alternative…

Horizontal stacks

For our homes or work tables we won’t bother arranging the books in a neat vertical fashion. Most often they will be stacked on top of each other with the recent ones on the top.

Sweet and simple, right?

Not quite there yet, I believe…

The height of a stack has limits.

You can only place so many books to make your own leaning tower of books before it all comes down like a pyramid of cards.

Although you can get multiple smaller shelves to place a few books each, if that really does suit you but it wont look half as nice. You can even place the individual shelves on top of each other to give it the appearance of the tower.

get it here https://amzn.to/3ufhkmT

Accessibility!

This one bookshelf, although looks amazing beside the fireplace, almost reaching up to the ceiling. But the very sight of this sends jitters down my spine in the anticipation of a slight imbalance and the aftermath of the fall.

Imagine if you had to fetch the book from anywhere in the middle of the stack.

I think the point is pretty clear here without any explanations.

The best of both worlds. Enter (drumroll…)

The slanting shelves

Full wall wooden slanting (horizonatal) bookshelf
https://nextluxury.com/home-design/bookcase-bookshelf-ideas/

When a book is placed in a slanting fashion, the weight of the book is evenly distributed between the bottom edge of the cover and the book below it.

This way the spine or the bottom right pages do not damage under the weight of the book. At the same time, it just as easy to fetch the book on the bottom of the tier as the stack is supported by the other wall of the shelf.

https://jerrynmaggie.com/products/bookshelf-slanted-short
get it here https://amzn.to/3fIQnTa

This can fulfil the need for a small bookshelf on the side of your table or a massive masterpiece in your living area, looking equally sophisticated in both scenarios.

Adding some lighting to the shelves can also give this a hard to miss art form aesthetic.

My search for a nice bookshelf ended with me getting a slant bookshelf (isn’t that obvious by now). But I did not order it from a store or online. Instead I created my own hack for this. I assembled a very simple box shaped rack. 2 racks infact with 3 rows and 3 columns each. Then I just hung them at a 40 degree slant with one overlapping the other on one of the columns.

See it below.

An installation in Mayank’s room (in the dark, with fairy lights)

--

--