Really, Pottery Barn?

First let me say that I love Pottery Barn - all the furniture, all the chi-chi decorating accents and all the lovely linens. Then came these little stacks of old books - aren't they sweet? Now to the crazy part - each stack of 4 books costs $30.00. What?? For a stack of books with the covers riped off and tied with a piece of twine?? So that means that the bowl of books above costs over $200.00, not counting the lovely wooden trough. Here's my version. I looked in our bookcases and found four books that would be headed to the donation pile. I looked for ones with deckle edges or colored pages to add interest. I used a box cutter to get the covers off without tearing the pages.

So here's to you Pottery Barn. I love that you have wonderfully creative designers and that occasionally I can make my own version of your (sometimes) wildly overpriced doo-dads.