Wearing the books out…

Of course, books aren’t just for reading, hiding, cutting up, and taking photos of. You can also adorn yourself with them, in all sorts of formats. So here’s a few examples of some snazzy book-based wearables.

Lets start with the rings.

Mini book + ring = cool.

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Mini book + secret compartment ring = awesome.

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And of course, you can always go for a necklace book. Extra geek points if you choose this one.

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Would you prefer your books to be a bit closer to you? Say, on your wrist? Here, you can either have the books in their mini entirety, or as a section of a full size one…

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 Or perhaps you’d like them on your ears?

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And you can make sure your mobile phone doesn’t unloved, with this phone charm.

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But you’ll be needing to keep your body well clothed too. How about a nice top or two?

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Can’t leave your feet out though, can we? How about some comic-covered high heels?

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But watch out: it’s still not quite warm enough to be venturing out without a nice, cosy scarf on, is it?

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It’s a cover up…

The modern version of the traditional physical book is now an eReader, whether that’s a Kindle, Nook, iPad, Kobo, or any other random bit of kit you might be using.

Perhaps these eReaders are perhaps just a bit too jarringly modern looking for you? Too shiny, too plasticky, to grey/black/white?

Wouldn’t it be nice if it looked like a proper, classic old book?

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How about with a cute puppy book?

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Maybe something a bit simpler?

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Fancy something a bit more…retro?

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Or do you prefer the look of comic book art?

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So many choices – what one shall it be?

Book a gift

Since I like a good browse on Etsy, and I come across some interesting stuff there, I thought it was time for another librariany gift selection. For this series of posts, I am focussing entirely on the book itself. That means items made out of books, accessories for modern books (the Kindle, iPad, Nook etc), clothes and jewellery that involve books, decorative book-related items, book quotes, and “other”, which is a whole world of random…

So, lets start with the physical book , shall we?

Book sculptures/folding is very popular on Etsy, so you can find plenty of “Christmas tree” shaped foldings, and even some shaped ones, like barrels, or pinch-waisted shapes. Even a pretty, sewn clamshell:

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The most impressive book sculptures I’ve seen though are these – very complex looking, and done to order:

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If you want to go all out for an insanely good book sculpture, you could invest in this sort of thing:

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Or if you want a slightly more affordable version, how about a photograph of a sculpture?

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Perhaps you prefer your books to be more “arty”? How about another style of book sculpture (that seems to be a bit more like “the horrific nightmare of a librarian after discovering a flood in their library” to me)?

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Or how about your own fairytale within a book?

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Books can be functional too – stacking your books on a floating “book shelf” would be good fun…until you got a schlumpy one that just wanted to do a slide off the side.

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Although perhaps yours books are a tad on the small side to be needing a big bookshelf all for themselves anyway?

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If you like to keep a book around that looks like a serious read, purely to impress visitors, then it could at least also be useful and charge your phone for you too:

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And where better to hide Important Things (and, of course, hip flasks) than in a books safe?

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Or do you like your books to be a bit more portable?

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And here endeth the first post of book gifts…more to come soon!

Librarian of all trades…

Master of none! 
I’m haunted, you know. Haunted, by RSS feeds, from sites that I monitor, taunting me with their unread status. And for the bulk of them, the magical “mark all as read” button doesn’t work, as I need to go through them all and check if there’s anything relevant for work….and work covers a LOT of topics!
Some of the legal topics I need to be aware of for work reasons (for Scottish, English, Welsh, Irish and European jurisdictions, where appropriate):
banking, finance, environment and pollution, construction, tax, corporate rescue and insolvency, planning, commercial litigation, employment, planning, and intellectual property.
And all their many, many sub-areas!
Library topics I need to be aware of for professional reasons:
UK law libraries, Scottish law libraries, international law libraries, UK public libraries, UKacademic libraries, Scottish public libraries, Scottish academic libraries.
Add all these areas together, and throw in varying sources that constantly churn info out, from Government sites, to newspapers and blog, and I’m always running just to stay still. You know it’s bad, when you look at your feed reader and catch yourself thinking “oh, there’s ONLY 200 unread items, that’s good!”
But then I get an enquiry, and come back to the feeds an hour later, to find it’s now 300 unread items. And another enquiry means it creeps up further…and by Monday, with the 2 days of the weekend meaning I’m leaving it untended, it’s often 800-900 unread items.
And I’m going on holiday now…when I come back, after a total of 10 days away from my feed reader, will it have snowballed out of control? I know I’ll be faced by Greader with that horrible taunt: “1,000+ items” in the bold that means unread. Mean, mean Greader!
Although, on the good side, I am pretty well informed and quite aware of the basics of almost anything to do with libraries, and commercial law in the UK…to the extent where I sometimes think that information is pushing other, more important stuff out of my head. Like the lyrics of 1980s pop songs.
Altogether now: Ah-gah-DOO-DOO-DOO, push pineapple, shake a tree….