There was an attempt to…make a book nook.

A book nook? What the fook is a book nook? 

A book nook is a hollow book-shaped box – think “chunky Fantasy or Sci-fi saga” thickness (not my usual “no wider than my thumb” rule for novels I will actually read).  This box sits on your bookshelf, and within it you can create a little scene, like an alleyway, garden or room, which then appears like a portal to a tiny universe sat amongst all the books you have bought but never read. 

Predictably, for a market demographic that contains “people who like books” and “people who like making little fantasy worlds”, there are a *lot* of Harry Potter “Diagon Alley” kits out there, but I wanted something a little more basic (i.e. easy). I opted for a bog-standard alleyway scene which came complete with a little staircase leading up to some balcony room.  The kit contained a few sheets of laser-cut wood ready for self assembly to construct the basic nook, with the idea that any decorations or elaboration were up to the individual.

Being both too lazy and not talented enough to paint a detailed wall, I went hunting for shortcuts , and I found one at one of my new favourite websites, Minimal World.  Minimal World is like a tiny scale Ikea, with small versions of any and every type of room you would want to recreate in miniature. I headed for the “street scene” section https://minimumworld.com/shop-by-room/streetscene/  and discovered that this was clearly a broad category, containing everything from tiny hot-dogs to a shotgun (the shop curator must have grown up on the wrong side of the tracks for this to be included in a typical street scene). There were even figures you could purchase, such as “modern teenage boy” who bizarrely wasn’t wearing a hoodie or staring into a mobile phone.

Despite the urge to buy absolutely everything, I purchased a few different brick wall and cobblestone patterned sheets, and some paper that decorated the wall like a fully-stocked library (the dolls house equivalent of changing your Zoom background to something sophisticated). My supplies arrived promptly, and I was ready to create a scene (from a crafting perspective only, although my swearing when things go wrong does draw some attention from other family members).

After painting and glueing all of my paper to the appropriate pieces prior to assembly, I fired up the YouTube link to follow the instructions. The video was a delightful homemade affair, delivered by two friendly ladies Kay and Maggie, who had a clear love of their kits and booking in general.  The thirty minutes of watching them talking through glueing staircase A to wall B, telling each other to move their fingers out of the way from the lens, going a bit wild on the camera zoom, and generally just having a bit of a chat as they were assembling, was all rather comforting.

None of the steps seemed particularly tricky, but of course it was far from idiot-proof, as this idiot demonstrated right towards the end of construction, when it was time to glue a mirror into position. “Angle mirror in lower arch….Hmm, lower arch?  I can’t see one of tho…oh bugger I’ve glued the back wall the wrong way around.” Yes, there followed some robust  swearing and dis-assembling before I was finally able to put the whole thing back together, but fortunately I still had plenty of spare paper and I was able to get things in the right positions without destroying any critical elements. 

I was pretty pleased with the final result; the kit contains a few nice touches to create the illusion of a bigger space (such as the aforementioned mirror), and a little battery powered-light that sits hidden on the top. I may have gone *slightly* over the top with my mix-and match approach to many different wall styles which would make an architect cry onto their drafting board, but it wasn’t a complete disaster. As a one-off project, it was quite fun, but given that for impact, it makes sense to keep the nook-to-book ratio low, it will be my only portal to another world that sits on my bookcase, apart from the contents of my books themselves. Of course, I can always change things up a little with a few choice purchases from Minimum World..now, where can I fit a dentist chair and a ouija board…?