Lovers of good bookshelves, cast your eyes over here:
www.shelfstore.net and www.shelvingsystem.co.uk
Especially if you have a lot of paperbacks (we have some thousands), you’ve probably noticed that finding nice-looking bookshelves that make the most of the available wall space is a nuisance. These people offer a good solution to the problem.
The shelving components come in a number of standard widths, heights and depths, so that with a little effort it’s possible to put together a shelf that will suit even an awkward space. (They say there are 294 possible basic combinations: I haven’t checked their math, but that seems about right.) The wood is solid pine, not too knotty, in a pleasant, neutral satin finish. The full-depth brackets that hold the shelves up run into fairly deep grooves cut into the shelf bottoms, so that the more books you put on a shelf, the more secure it gets. And the holes into which the brackets run come at 5 mm intervals, so that you can adjust the shelves pretty closely to the height of what you’re putting on them. 
These are perfect for CDs and DVDs, too. You can join separate units to one another, you can build units over or around awkward pieces of furniture (radiators, etc), and there are extras available for them — cupboard doors, drawers, glass shelves. There’s also a Java-based design tool on one of their web pages so that you can see how the basic layout looks and works, and store the design for later reference or to order.
When I first stumbled across the Shelfstore website, we decided to test them by designing one shelf that would go on a “waste-space” wall in one of the upstairs bathrooms. The space is about 7 ft high by 20″ wide, and we ordered nine shelves for it, 5″ deep. Delivery took about two weeks (part of this was just shipping time from England to Ireland, which is routinely 4-5 days for largish things coming via TNT or one of the other “bulk” couriers). The bookcase took about twenty minutes to assemble, including the two brackets that secure the top of it to the wall and make everything rock-steady. The components are very solid and well-made: the finished shelf holds 250 paperbacks, +/- a few.
Two more of these were delivered over the last week, one for the living room, again as a test, and a second one for the bathroom (which is rapidly turning into an excellent library). The living-room one devoured all the books which had been in its predecessor shelf, and had room for half as many more again.
We’re sold. Have a look at the websites and see if they suit you. (US readers: yes, they ship to the States: yes, the shipping charges will probably stun you. The owner tells me that thet’re contemplating setting up a US-based distribution center because they’ve been getting so many orders from there.)
