I had to laugh a little when I saw a post about a bookcase giveaway at Temple Library Reviews since I had the same initial reaction when I was contacted by CSN (a company that apparently sells things like office furniture, bookcases, desks, and mattresses) about reviewing one of their products: puzzlement. In fact, I nearly deleted the message until the word “bookcase” caught my eye. Then I figured why not write a bookcase review – anyone who loves books enough to follow a book blog like this one is probably afflicted with problems similar to mine – having eight bookshelves and still not enough space for all these books that pile up. Plus the bookshelves I do have tend to bend under the weight of thick epic fantasy hardcovers. This is actually what got me thinking that a review of this sort of product would be useful; I’ve had so many crappy bookshelves that I know I would have appreciated a bit of up-front testing.

While looking through their site, I was positively drooling over some of the shelves – someday I want to have the money and space to have a library wall or a gorgeous corner bookcase. I’ve always wanted to have a library with enough shelf space to actually alphabetize my books since now I have to double stack them all, which means keeping similarly sized books together. So I can’t alphabetize them by author very well (especially since they are also spread throughout the apartment) and it drives the anal side of me crazy. (Plus I just like for sets of books to look like they go together because well… have I mentioned I’m anal about some things?) I was about to ask if I was the only one who had that problem, but fortunately, I remembered this discussion from Orannia’s blog. It was such a relief to discover I wasn’t the only one.