But Ms. Potash has no respect: her books are arranged in acrobatically precarious stacks, shuffled together like cards or regimented in various "V" formations, as if enacting an eminently Victorian version of installation art.

The Main and North Arcades are the most popular areas, with bellowing fishmongers, arts and crafts, and precarious stacks of gemlike fruits and vegetables.

Hence, like a hideous example of urban sprawl, my active library has invaded the floor, forming a labyrinth of precarious stacks and sliding heaps.

The bookstore was beloved by browsers and scholars alike, attracting writers like Amiri Baraka and John Edgar Wideman, as well as thousands of anonymous book lovers who rooted through the dusty, precarious stacks for hours.

They had a cartilaginous spine that was much more flexible and much stronger than the rather precarious stacks that formed the backbones of humans and angels.

When my husband and I went to the civil registry in our district, dozens of people, most carrying infants, sat on precarious stacks of cardboard boxes in two tiny rooms filled with trash.

Watching David Gelb, 95, navigate precarious stacks of fluorescent tubing to locate and then gingerly handle the perfect bulb is a sublime experience.

The earth moves, heaving upward in the "Eiffel Tower" series with its cascading lead character, sheathed in red, flanked by precarious stacks of buildings and stepped clouds.

Damen gathered up the various bowls and battered cups that served as drinking vessels, and balanced them in precarious stacks in his arms.