While I tend to go about caching piles of books everywhere—on top of dressers and tables, below the bed, beside my computer—others rely on furniture that is specifically intended for book storage. Of course, you can’t go wrong filing away your titles in an old-fashioned bookcase within a proper library. Or you can arrange your titles in any number of innovative bookshelves such as Wintertree and Need Not Arrange Anymore.

Nook. Designed by Dave Pickett.

Coffee Table with Built-in Shelf

If you like having a smaller group of books ready at your fingertips, then you might consider the table with a built-in shelf entitled Nook. Designed by Product Design student Dave Pickett, who is currently finishing his fourth year at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Nook includes a wonderful little niche for a select group of books—what Pickett refers to as “your most prized coffee table books.” If your collection gets larger, you can always prop some tomes on top of the smooth wood expanse of the tabletop, making horizontal piles here and there on its inviting surface.

Regardless of its nook, the table’s design offers other advantages. Like a complex puzzle, Nook plays with your expectations of structural transparency: “The complex geometry of the design conveys an illusion of floating, in effect enticing the viewer to investigate how the coffee table balances.” While you are entertained with this question, you can cross your legs comfortably, since that same unique geometry is designed to give plenty of foot room. Nook also gives you versatility: arrange the table in different orientations, with the nook face-in or face-out or in between.

Via Six Different Ways.

About the Designer: Currently a Product Design student at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Dave Pickett has already won various design awards, including the 2011 Student Genius Design Prize. Pickett believes in design that balances “functionality, intuitive operation, and aesthetics.” He is also interested in ergonomics, sustainability, and brand strategy.