Top Shelf

A colour-coordinated collection

Who: Renée Tse, a shopping and social media editor Where: Innisfil

In September of 2021, Renée Tse; her sister, Claudia; and their parents were dining on a patio overlooking a canal by Lake Simcoe. The family had driven an hour and a half from Markham, where they’d lived for 28 years, to see how they might like slower-paced Innisfil. Watching the sailboats bob by, they were sold, so they started looking at properties.

The family saw this townhouse with double-height ceilings and scooped it up as a quasi-vacation property. They now split their time between Markham and Innisfil. Renée, a voracious reader, was eager to take advantage of the vertical space for her extensive book collection.

She and Claudia came up with the idea for the 22-foot custom bookshelf. Their mother, a graphic designer, drafted the design, and a cousin, Ken Poon of Wooden Woodworking, built it. In Markham, Renée’s books were stored haphazardly. Now, they’re displayed in an orderly and colourful fashion, adding a splash of vibrancy to an otherwise neutral space.

There’s a ladder, but it’s only 10 feet, which means a manga collection on the upper shelves is mainly admired from a distance. Series from Renée’s childhood, like Magic Tree House and Junie B. Jones, are at the bottom. Roald Dahl and Lemony Snicket make appearances, as do Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the Charlie Bone series. J. K. Rowling and the Shopaholic series follow. “Sophie Kinsella has brought me so much joy,” says Renée. Currently, she’s reading the viral fantasy series by Sarah J. Maas that opens with A Court of Thorns and Roses.

Renée often brings a hardcover with her when she commutes downtown. “I’m 33, but it makes me feel like a little kid,” she says. “There’s something nostalgic about holding a book.”

An art and travel treasure trove

Who: Jane Halverson, an art therapist Where: Midtown

In January of 2024, Jane Halverson downsized from her large family home in Rosedale, where she’d lived for more than two decades and raised two sons. With the boys in university, Jane and her mini goldendoodle, Rocco, were starting fresh in a new 1,600-square-foot, three-bed, three-bath apartment. And she was taking her vast book collection with her.

Her home library is made up of 600 to 700 volumes, primarily on art and travel. Jane’s unit has a windowless den by the entranceway. As soon as she saw it, she knew it would be perfect for her books. “Apartments are white cubes. Books are a warm way to enter a space,” she says.

Jane enlisted interior designer Colette van den Thillart to create custom shelving. “She’s a huge book lover herself.” The designer told Jane they didn’t need to do much—just plywood. Built by woodworkers EJA, the bespoke unit is geometric and eye-catching. Movable slats can be reconfigured to fit all sorts of items. “They had the amazing idea of putting a lamp in one of the compartments, which looks fabulous in the evening,” says Jane.

The books aren’t in any order. In her old house, they were organized by colour. “Colette forbade me from doing that here,” says Jane. She now agrees with the designer. “Books are beautiful on their own. You don’t need to do anything to them.”

The shelves are filled with titles picked up at art exhibitions, at museums, on travels and through Jane’s work as an art therapist. She has books from Easter Island, Vietnam, Cambodia, Morocco and trips to New York with her sons. “Books are a travel history, a learning history and a career history,” she says. “I can look at the titles of all the places I’ve visited.”

A multi-storey reading sanctuary

Who: Nadia Alam, a book illustrator Where: Roncesvalles

In the 1980s and ’90s, Nadia Alam spent summers in Bangladesh, where her family is from. “A core memory I have is sitting with my cousins at the book market, reading and drawing,” she says.

A lifelong reader who describes books as her security blanket, Nadia always keeps a stack of reading material close by. So, in April of 2019, when she was renovating the west-end home she shares with her family—which includes two kids and their shiba inu, Momo—Nadia wanted to give her beloved books a place of their own.

She enlisted Charisma Panchapakesan of CAB Architects to integrate shelving on three levels of the 2,800-square-foot home. Panchapakesan designed clean white-oak units, which were built by BLWD Woodworking. They flank the fireplace in the living room, the wall behind Nadia’s bed and the space below the staircase in the basement, where Panchapakesan created a library lounge with a Scandinavian-style fireplace.

Cozy mysteries by Louise Penny, crime fiction by P. D. James and a leather-bound collection of Agatha Christie’s complete works are stashed downstairs. The living room and bedroom shelves, meanwhile, aren’t organized by genre: there’s some John Updike, V. S. Naipaul, David Lodge, Roddy Doyle, Michael Ondaatje and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Books are such a compulsion for Nadia that she can’t walk past a Little Free Library without scouring its contents. And it pays off: she recently scored Agatha Christie’s A Pocket Full of Rye, Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead and—serendipitously for an illustrator—The New Yorker Album of Drawings: 1925–1975. “The cartoons are so elegant, and the line drawings are simple and beautiful,” says Nadia. “I’ll use them for inspiration.”

An art deco–inspired book haven

Who: Theresa Casey, an interior designer Where: Mount Pleasant and St. Clair

Designer couple Theresa Casey and Robert Gray bought their 1930s brick home two decades ago. It’s square and compact, similar in scale to a coach house. “Books have always been my point of connection to the world,” says Theresa. The same goes for Robert, who designs books and exhibition spaces. His mother, a librarian, helped set up the collection at the Toronto Reference Library.

A sizable portion of Theresa and ­Robert’s large collection is housed in the combined living and dining room. Custom shelves, designed by Theresa, wrap around two deep-set windows, their sills lashed in bright red. The couple uses them to display book covers and artwork. On the opposite wall, two more bookcases flank a grey leather and black velvet banquette with upholstered seats and a chunky pedestal table. Theresa added grilles she found at an antique store to the bottom of the bookshelves.

The space is bookish yet playful. Framed sketches and oil paintings by Theresa, who studied fine art, hang on the walls. An area rug with a fat yellow snake on it, by UK-based designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, adds some whimsy. Theresa’s taste in both decor and books is influenced by her Irish heritage. “We have a dark sense of humour,” she says. Her reading list includes Irish authors like Claire Keegan, Maggie O’Farrell and Nuala O’Faolain.

There are more art, design and fiction books in Robert’s basement studio as well as in Theresa’s backyard office (a converted garage). When she’s not reading, Theresa listens to radio host Eleanor Wachtel’s podcast, Writers and Company, where she discovers new novels to devour. “I always have a book on the go,” she says. “I’m an insatiable reader.”