I don’t really like Christmas.
First of all, that fucking hippopotamus song makes me homicidal (sorry Fiona).
Secondly, Christmas has always been a busy and stressful time of year for me professionally. It’s hard for me to do my job and also have the time and energy to do all the other Christmas shit that’s expected around this time of year.
So, to preserve my sanity and happiness, I usually don’t do those things. I don’t bake cookies. I don’t decorate. My family stopped doing gifts–thank the Lord. And I don’t put up a Christmas tree.
Dewey, my cat, is partially to blame as in his mind, the Christmas tree exists solely as an outlet for his destructive inclinations and a mechanism for cleaning his teeth.
I could save myself time by just dropping it in the middle of my living room, on its side, and breaking a few ornaments.
Anyway, this year in a moment of inspiration and a burst of energy, I decided to make a Bookmas tree.
This wasn’t my original idea. The Ripped Bodice has a Christmas Tree made of books and there are plenty of photos on Pinterest. (Also of note: The Ripped Bodice’s front window this year is a menorah made of books!)
For my Bookmas tree, I started by assembling some books and sorting them by size. By “some” books I mean somewhere between a crapload and a fuckton. I sorted them by hardcover, trade paperback, and mass market paperback.
I started with a ring of hardcover books as the base. I added another ring over that, and kept moving up until I had a cone shape. Once the hardcovers were used up I went on to the trade paperbacks and then the mass market. I found that it was important to use books that are approximately the same width in the same ring. Putting a thick book in with a thin one leads to a wobbly tree.
How many times did I need to remove Dewey from the center of the tree? Approximately three.
I finished it off with battery operated fairy lights I got off of Amazon.
The pros: the tree is actually really stable. Dewey has so far been unable to topple it. It’s also super cool and pretty.
The cons: if you want to read a book you used to assemble the tree, you’re basically fucked. You’re looking at a Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom situation (sans looted cultural artifacts), weighing another book your palm, questioning how quickly you can switch them out. The other option is disassembling it to the correct ring or Jenga.
Fortunately I’ve still got enough books that the tree can stay up for awhile.
What about you? Do you have any literary-themed holiday décor? Or do you have a Bookmas Tree?
That is cool. I’ve seen the tabletop versions, but a full-size book tree is impressive.
I haven’t had a tree since my then cat got his head caught between 2 branches and almost choked himself. At least 1 of the 3 current cats would gnaw the lights. I go to my aunt’s and look at her stuff.
Dewey’s adorable. I love orange kitties. 🙂
That looks great. For a library display I made a snowman out of books for the reference desk. It was easy and quick and the patrons actually recognized it as a snowman. I would love to try the book tree one day.
I love this!
Nice!
I, probably, wouldn’t do this, since I’m pretty sure I’d immediately want to read stuff right down at bottom. Plus, no way to hang ornaments. (My tree is an excuse to buy Star Wars ornaments.)
Love it!!!
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Definitely book jenga! Hope you don’t want to read one from the middle of the tree before it comes down.
And Dewey is too cute!* He deserves his own mini tree.
*Not as cute as my orange boy (in my totally objective opinion), but still pretty darn dapper. =^.^=
Love it! I keep seeing pictures of these, but yours is the first description I’ve seen of someone actually building one.
I put up a Christmas Tree for the first time this year. My 10-year-old cat hasn’t tried to climb it but is more interested in chewing on the branches and batting at the toys – oops, I mean ornaments – hanging on the lower branches. But probably her favourite activity is trying to pull all of the tissue paper out of the gift bags sitting under the tree.
I love this idea, but I’d never get it built.
“Ooo, I forgot about this one, just a chapter or two”
“This one had that great scene with the lobster”
“Oh yeah, the heroine was in charge”
I’d look up and it would be mid January.
Wow! Looks great and the lights are perfect! The first time I’ve seen a book tree beyond table size, too.
We put up our Christmas tree over the weekend. We have a slim tree decorated with sentimental favorites and artfully barricaded by furniture. One of our dogs thinks the ornaments on the bottom branches are his to hoard, so we haven’t had a room-filling Christmas tree in years.
I haven’t done anything with books, but my Dream is to have a small all-knit tree. The tree will be purchased with real lights, but I want all the ornaments, garland, topper, skirt, and even some “lights” to be all knit. I have tab in my Ravelry queue just for this and it’s like 5 pages long. Lol. Some day.
@Jean Russell:
I would also end up in a book fort made of books I just want to re-read this one scene…
And I have to ask: by lobster scene, you mean “When a Scot Ties the Knot” by Tessa Dare? Because if it isn’t, I want to know. I need more great lobster scenes.
Your book tree is one of the more impressive ones I’ve seen – you usually don’t see full size unless it’s at a library. LOL It looks fantastic!
Years ago I put together a tree made from the big cardboard tubes that wrapping paper comes on, with branches from tin foil/plastic wrap tubes, paper towel tubes, and toilet paper tubes. Then I took scraps of many colors of yarn and wrapped the cardboard in the yarn. The tree lasted for a number of years but got damaged in a move. I started another a couple of years ago but never finished.
This is just lovely.
I love it – and Dewey! I would love to do that but don’t really have the room. Why? Too many books! 😉
@Maite, yes it is! The fear if book forts is why I’ve not organized our collection.
Your book tree is awesome. It actually looks really stable, proven by Dewey of course. I had an orange cat years ago. He gave me my best memory of a tree when one year my mom decided to put gifts for our pets under the tree. He launched himself into the air, all limbs outstretched and landed in the center of the tree and toppled it. He found his gift that year and the next year when he got into the closet that held his kitty stocking.
Beautiful! Happy holidays to all. 🙂
Saving the Christmas tree from the cat is a familiar theme in our house. Kitty is too pudgy and kind of old to try to climb it but last year for some reason took a flying leap and toppled the whole thing! Broken ornaments everywhere!
This year I brought in a huge fern from an outdoor pot just before frost and put it on the floor in the living room. Kitty LOVES it. She hide & naps under the thing–her jungle. I’ve decided to decorate it as a Christmas Fern so I don’t have to fight her over its spot for a tree and risk her retaliation. String lights and a few ornaments on stakes should do it.
Dewey’s face in the pic where he is helping made my heart grow three sizes.
Allison Janney was on The Chew the other day and mentioned her mom decorating a tree from the top down, starting with the star, then angels, then Earth-dwelling creatures, then sea creatures. It was such a cool idea.
I think this is really cool, and it sounds like it was a lot of fun to do. I would love to do a mini tree with books by one author, or books on my keeper shelf, or some other fun theme like that.
When you take it down, you should invite some friends over and use the tree to play a bookish game of Jenga. LOL. Just a thought.
Happy Holidays to all!
I have a stack of Christmas-themed books from multiple genres–classics, romance, wit, cozy mystery, children’s books, etc…I put out on my living room coffee table. My friend’s mom did that–that’s where I learned it circa 1989.
What fun! Thanks for sharing. And here’s hoping for a calm and joyous holiday for all.
I’m allergic to Xmas trees, so we put up a small fake tree every year, with variously chewed on ornaments from my pack of hounds. This booktree is seriously fucking awesome and I am so stealing this idea! Thanks to you and Dewey for sharing.
Love it. 🙂
Super cute! But it looks like more work than putting up a “regular” tree! I currently have up three trees…all under four feet. My husband asked, “do we always have three trees?” He seriously doesn’t know, poor thing.
@AmyS: You should add one every year until the house is wall-to-wall trees, and when he asks if it’s normal, in your best Stepford wife imitation, say, “I don’t know what you mean, sweetheart. It’s always been this way. Always.”
I would love to do this someday! For now, I had to content myself with a book snowman I made a couple of weeks ago. It’s the best kind of snowman to have! https://www.facebook.com/writerleighkramer/photos/a.636564686388754.1073741830.633227510055805/1747678845277327/?type=3
Freaking Love this.
So impressive.
I’d say Christmas is in the bag.
And Dewey is pretty damn cute too.
The book tree is fantastic!!!! I’ve sent cards that have book trees in the design but have never seen on IRL.
But I’m with you on avoiding the stress. My sisters and I decided to stop gift buying several years ago and use that money to donate to our favorite charities. Several years before that, I gave up on putting up a tree….too much hassle putting it up then taking it down. I do have a wreath on the door and snow globes, candles, etc set out. But nope….no malls for me, no baking, no tree.
This is amazing and way more Christmas spirit than I have ever mustered – a few nativities and Christmas Eve service are my limit of getting into it. But. That. Tree. Is. Fabulous. Thank you for the moment!!
The tree is marvelous, but, really: “that fucking hippopotamus song makes me homicidal”???
All right, I grew up playing The Three Stooges’s Christmas songs EP with that on it, so I’m biased (as well as Very Old), but how can you beat:
“Pop says a hippo would eat me up but then
Teacher says a hippo is a vegetarian”
rivaled only by “We’ll have to muddle through somehow” and “You mean you forgot cranberries too” on great tonal shifts within the verse.
Somehow I’ve managed to never hear that hippopotamus Christmas song. Yet coincidentally, today I saw a nativity scene that appears to include a hippopotamus:
https://www.facebook.com/chris.eboch/posts/10155075059255978?pnref=story
Love this! Well done.
The look on Dewey’s face in the “helping” picture is priceless.
What a beautiful tree! Also cat! We did a Bookmass tree out of reference books in our library a couple of years ago. It was about 4 ft. tall. Last year we did a snow man out of books and a hearth scene. It was a lot of fun. I would never have the ambition to do one at home though. Good on you. Hope your holiday is wonderful!
I love this so much! Great job and Dewey approves!
This is so awesome!!! Makes me wish I had more paper books!