Literature inspires interior design

I’m a sucker for a good book and it’s even better if I have a great place to read it.

“Novel Interiors: Living in Enchanted Rooms Inspired by Literature,” by Lisa Borgnes Giramonti (Potter Style, $35) combines both of those pleasures in a new coffee table book designed for lovers of literature.

In the book, Borgnes Giramonti, writer and founder of the blog, A Bloomsbury Life, offers guidelines to help book lovers mix contemporary tastes with literary style.

Mining the details written by literary greats such as Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald — and other authors of more than 60 classic works of literature — Borgnes Giramonti offers up ways to bring those small touches to your home.

“It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about the house opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with grey-turning, gold-turning light,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in “The Great Gatsby.”

Fitzgerald, for example, knew how to describe a room in all its glam splendor and in response to this passage, Borgnes Giramonti suggests that gold and silver can be mixed in a room. Metallics are now considered neutrals. In light rooms gold and silver shimmer, she says. In dark rooms, they are a source of illumination, casting an ethereal glow.

Using a collection of homes photographed by Ivan Terestchenko, Borgnes Giramonti identifies the literary references in each room and illustrates ways to make them your own.