TUESDAY 20 MAY 2014 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 inside Godzilla tramples CAMPUS rivals with monster • MIS organises fundraising events $93m debut for Rota projects P | 4 P | 8-9 HOSPITALITY • Renaissance Doha City Center Hotel outlets win top awards P | 6 RECIPE CONTEST • Send in your best recipe and win a dinner voucher for two P | 7 HEALTH • Silently among us: Scientists worry about milder cases of MERS LIVING WITH P | 11 TECHNOLOGY • What is Twitch, and why does YOUR BOOKS Google want it? Getting rid of extra stuff crammed on top of P | 12 books and arranging books by colour and size helps create visually pleasing book shelves. Take four piles of treasured books, add one bookcase, Learn Arabic • Learn commonly and you have the formula for turning a mess of a used Arabic words personal library into an artful display. and their meanings P | 13 2 PLUS | TUESDAY 20 MAY 2014 COVER STORY By Mari-Jane Williams love books. Not just reading them, but how they smell, the weight of them in my hands, the feel of the I pages when I turn them. So natu- How to coexist rally, I have a lot, culled from all stages of my life. Even the ones I didn't like and have no intention of revisiting (I'm looking at you, Moby-Dick), I am compelled to keep. After peacefully with all, the books we read are more than just things. Somehow, they become a part of who we are. A little piece of our soul. “I think when you spend time with a book, when you invest the time to sit and your books read something for however long it takes, it's very hard to let go of that,” said Jill Goldberg, the founder of Hudson Interior Designs in Boston. “It’s just like a little kid with a stuffed animal that they want to hold on to.” At some point, though, I realised that the way my books were crammed into every available space, spilling haphaz- ardly out of my bookshelf and stacked on the floor, didn't accurately reflect their importance to me. They also looked like an afterthought, when really, they're any- thing but. I was in desperate need of an intervention. I sent photos of my “bad bookcase” to several designers and certified profes- sional organisers to get their suggestions of how best to display my book collection. (If you can even call it that; the only value in my beat-up stacks of Penguin Classics is sentimental.) Then I spent an afternoon pulling everything off the shelves, trying differ- ent arrangements, and identifying what should stay in the living room and what could be boxed away. The marked-up copy of Shakespeare's complete works that saw me through college is now stashed in the basement, because I almost never find a reason to crack it open. I moved cook- books off the shelves and into a cabinet in the kitchen, and relegated piles of maga- zines to the recycling bin. No one I spoke to suggested getting rid of books, which was good, because that's not an option for me. This wasn't an exer- cise in de-cluttering; it was an attempt to find a way to cohabitate with my books and let them shine. Because, like I said, I love them. That's a sentiment Tracy Morris, prin- cipal designer at Tracy Morris Design in Washington, often hears from her clients. A book lover herself, Morris is happy to incorporate books into design. “As long as you do it tastefully, so it's beautiful and clean, you can put them anywhere your heart desires,” she said. “Books are an enormous part of creating texture and warmth in a house.” And displaying books artfully, in com- bination with other meaningful treas- ures from your travels or childhood, can turn them from clutter into a conversa- tion piece, said Andreas Charalambous, principal architect at Forma Design in Washington. “If you provide someone with the infrastructure or backdrop to place things in an orderly manner, it ends up being pleasing to look at,” Charalambous said. “You don't want to just hide these things behind a closet door, because then they lose the importance that they have.” PLUS | TUESDAY 20 MAY 2014 3 So how can bibliophiles strike that balance between hanging on to their treasures and keeping their house from looking like something that should be featured on an episode of “Hoarders”? Here are suggestions from profes- sionals on how to incorporate your book collection into your home design, Those who are many of which I used in my bookcase overhaul. more expressive and don’t care — Organise in a way that works for you about the content Books can be organised alphabeti- may choose to cally, or by size, subject, author or colour. As long as it works for you sort the books by and reflects how you think about colour, starting and retrieve your books, it’s fine, said with red and Cynthia Lindsey, the president of Organizing Ease in Nashville. going through The methodical reader might want the spectrum to to start in the top left corner and go across each shelf in alphabetical order, violet, creating a either by title or author. Those who are rainbow of book more expressive and don’t care about the content may choose to sort the spines. books by colour, starting with red and going through the spectrum to violet, creating a rainbow of book spines. This can work well for people who have a lot of books, said Goldberg, who helped a family with hundreds of books stage them by colour in their home library. Other clients prefer to display books of one colour, such as white or blue, to create a calming feel, Morris said. But some people — myself included — prefer to organise their books by subject, to make them easier to find when they need them. It’s hard for me to imagine separating the brown- spined Jane Eyre from her black-spined texture and a neutral, toned-down feel- between the horizontal books and the use the same colour frame throughout. Bronte cousins. ing to your space, Trager said. side of the bookcase, she said. Art or Group objects on the top of the book- That’s fine, too, Morris said. She Trager had another client who coffee table books are perfect for stack- case in sets of odd numbers, such as suggests ordering books by size within needed to keep her books in the living ing horizontally, because they are often three or five. Or, Lindsey said, keep the those categories to keep the finished room but hated the way they looked. too tall for the shelf. top of the bookcase empty for a clean, product looking neat and organised. She created covers for each of her Stacking books horizontally on top uncluttered look. Either put the tallest books on the recessed shelves out of thin paper- of your vertical books, though, like I outside and work toward the smaller, board. When she wanted a particular had done to cram more books into the — Find balance or put the tallest in the middle of the book, she could pull the covers down, space, is a no-no, Morris and Lindsey If you have a bookcase with more shelf and have them get smaller as they but when they were up, it looked like agreed. That just makes the shelves than one column of shelves (like mine), fan out. a solid coloured wall, fading into the look cluttered. Duly noted. Morris suggested using the same pat- background. tern in opposite corners to create a — Find a way to neutralise them — Integrate some meaningful or balanced effect. Amy Trager, a certified professional — Mix it up beautiful objects to break up the For example, on the top left and bot- organizer based in Chicago, suggested Blend horizontal and vertical stacks books tom right shelves, she said, you could flipping the books around so the pages of books to create visual interest on Those horizontally stacked books pull the middle books out and turn are facing out, instead of the spine, to your shelves, Morris said. can be a great place to put a small them so they are horizontal, then put cut down on the visual clutter of the She suggested arranging vertical frame or vase, Morris said. a small picture on top. books’ different colors and sizes. books on the ends of the shelf, with Choose a variety of items or art that That only works, of course, if you horizontal stacks in the middle. Or is meaningful to you, and try to keep — Think beyond the bookcase don’t need to quickly access specific using a few art books stacked on their things around the same size, she said. Book collections don’t have to be books, but it’s a great way to add sides as a bookend. Leave a few inches If you are using framed photos or art, limited to a traditional shelving unit. We’ve seen them thoughtfully stacked inside a fireplace, or used as an end table next to a chair. Morris said she once had a client who had a shelf across the top of a headboard for a line of shallow books. She has also seen books stacked above and below coffee tables and on ladders that lean against the wall. Lindsey once placed books stacked kitty-corner to one another in a tran- sition area between floors, to create a sculptural display of large art books.