Print may be dead...

...but that doesn't mean it can't be repurposed. Case in point: this intriguing Re-Nest post, via Lifehacker:

Weblog Apartment Therapy Re-Nest shows how to repurpose a pile of old magazines or vintage books into a small table in just about 10 minutes. Pulling it off is a simple matter of tucking every 10 pages or so back into the spine of the magazine--you don't even need glue or any additional supplies.

I'll admit that the long shot of the plant stand appearing on Re-Nest (not the one appearing here) makes the piece look a little unstable, though I still do like the concept. In any case, at the rate things are going you should be able to decorate your whole living room with old books or magazines pretty soon. Take this post from BoingBoing, for instance, which talks about a chair made out of books that otherwise would have been discarded.

Books and magazines have long been used as furniture, or at least as accouterments, as Janice Radway's A Feeling for Books, Henry Petrowski's The Book on the Book Shelf, and Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins' Reading National Geographic all have clearly shown. Still, I wonder if the mass digitization of printed matter, combined with an upsurge in feelings of environmental responsibility, will hasten the transformation of books and magazines into furniture proper.

Then again, all this just as easily could be a passing fad.