When the late Anthony Hail and his partner, Charles Posey, downsized to an apartment in San Francisco in the late 1990s, Hail was by then semiretired, and he had begun to devote much of his newfound free time to reading. Thus, the space that might have served only as a living room also became the library for the pair. “I try to arrange things by country,” Hail said, “so that they have something to do with each other.”Perhaps the room’s biggest surprise, however, is his choice of equipment for accessing the upper reaches of his vast book collection. Instead of the more traditional sliding ladder, propped against the built-in bookcases is a wood painter’s ladder—a richly patinated example from the 19th century, no less. (May 2007)