So this Labor Day I probably did the most physical labor around my house I’ve done all year. I started with removing everything from the back wall in my office; an old mounted TV, a deteriorating bookshelf, and an entertainment center I had for about 10 years. After I removed those things, I noticed the wall was scuffed up a lot. I attempted to do touch-ups on the pain of the wall, but mistakenly used the wrong pain, so, therefore, ended up painting half the office (The non Burnt Orange walls were the original paint because I thought it looked fine, but it was lazy.)

As the day went on, I moved everything around and painted the two walls, and I’m really happy with the darkish gray color. After that dried, it was time to make my new large Kallax bookshelf from Ikea. The image above is still a work in progress, but I love the way it pulls my office together, and it gives me a place to show off my cool books!

Let’s take a tour of the highlights (still a work in progress but you might like this.)

On the top, I currently have some of the awards I’ve earned on display. These were originally on the side wall, but I really like the way they look next to the AWESOME decanter I was sent to by B-Man at the Tipsy Trope!

Gotta have a Dune shelf. I’d love to get an Ornithopter form the movie to display in front of it. In the back, it’s a little hard to see, but a copy of the board game Dune Imperium fills the back; it was a gift from my brother Dave.

My Folio Society Foundation set! These might be the most expensive books I own, and before they were sitting on a shelf with only their spines shown, completely neglecting the awesome art on the covers. I added a statue of David I bought in Florence on a trip to Italy awhile back. It just felt right.

Whaaat? How’d that get there?

This one is my “Work Shelf” where I put all the Blurays of the films I’ve worked on, and any cool little trinkets I’ve received along the way. I intend to display whichever movie is the current release in the front and add Bad Guys to the pile behind it when the next film releases on Bluray.

The Expanse shelf! I loved that collector’s edition of Levithan Wakes. I still need to get the final book, but I’m waiting for it to be available in Paperback, (which I believe is very soon. I have it preordered.) I’d love to get a little figure of the Roscinante to display in front, like the Ornithopter that I’d also love.

This one’s special to me. I loved Redwall in my younger years and even wrote a letter to Brian Jacques (and he responded!) way back then. Keen-eyed readers of my books may notice that I named a ship the Jacques in AT THE THRESHOLD OF THE UNIVERSE. These are the actual editions I read as a kid. I kept them all these years. I used to own all of them, but over time I held onto just my top favorites (even though I loved them all). The figure in front of a 3D print I made of how I used to draw the Scout Team in my 3rd grade comic book, Space Explorers. I love that little figure, and it felt right here for now because it represents my younger years too.

So awhile back I also used to collect any and all astronaut figures I could find. It was just something to do, but it also complimented my love of the Apollo Program and NASA in general. This shelf is especially cool due to that Alan Bean figure and his book of art. Alan Bean is my favorite astronaut because he is the only artist they sent to the moon. He was a pretty funny person too. That figure of him in his suit is actually part of an old Power Rangers action figure set where it was the Rangers with various heroes of the time. I found it on Ebay a long time ago, and it’s one of my favorite figures I have.

Here we go, one of my favorites. Vernor Vinge’s Zones of Thought are my favorite Scifi books, hands down. Even though Children of the Sky ends on a cliffhanger that I don’t think will be resolved, this series was just so full of creativity and awesome visuals that it inspires me every time I read his work. I got these first edition hardcovers on ebay (not cheap!) because they are also some of my favorite covers! Look at those cool scenes! The spaceship in the foreground is the Astraeus 3D print I printed years ago.

I play a lot of various TTRPGs with my friends, and here’s just a smattering of some of the little minis my friends have given me over the years. I have no talent for painting minis (I WISH I DID I AM SO JEALOUS) but my friends love it and they do a great job. I do have a copy of Moonrakers back there, which is just a board game and not a TTRPG, but that might shift somewhere else. (The board game shelf is full at the moment.)

So this came about because I had removed the office TV that the PS2 and the super-Nintendo-thing were connected to. I thought maybe they might serve their purpose better as a cool display, since I was mostly emulating whatever I wanted to play on my PC anyway. I love how this came out though, it gave me a place to show off my retro gaming stuff. I added the few amiibos I own because they felt right.

And there you have it! The bottom row is pretty sparse at the moment, so I’ll have to find a cool theme for each of those boxes at some point. There’s a few other boxes I didn’t show because they were just sort of thrown together right now (or uninteresting, I mean the Quest 2 headset is cool but it’s not that interesting to look at currently) I hope you enjoyed this little tour!

Have a great day, and happy reading!

Cheers,

—T.A.