You've finally mined enough diamonds for a pickaxe and an enchanting table. You set it down, expecting level 30 enchants, but all you see are low-level junk options. It’s annoying. To get the good stuff—Silk Touch, Fortune III, or Mending—you need a library. Knowing how to get bookshelves in Minecraft is basically the barrier between being a "late-game" player and someone just futzing around with stone tools. Honestly, it's one of those grinds that feels easy until you realize how many cows have to die for your cause.
Whether you're playing on a hardcore world or just a casual Creative build, the math stays the same. You need fifteen of these blocks to max out an enchanting table. That’s a lot of leather. But crafting isn't the only way to fill a room with books. You can steal them, trade for them, or find them in the dusty corners of a dungeon.
The Standard Crafting Recipe (And the Leather Problem)
Let's talk about the basic way most people do it. You go to a crafting table. You put three books in the middle row and fill the top and bottom rows with wooden planks. Any wood works. Oak, dark oak, cherry, whatever. It doesn’t change the look of the shelf, which is honestly a bit of a bummer for builders, but it keeps things simple.
The real bottleneck is the books.
Each bookshelf requires three books. Each book requires one piece of leather and three pieces of paper. This means for a full enchanting setup of 15 bookshelves, you need 45 books. That translates to 45 leather and 135 sugar cane. If you haven't started a cow farm yet, you’re going to be sprinting across plains biomes for hours. Sugar cane is easy; you just plant it on sand or dirt next to water and wait. But cows? They're the real MVPs of the enchanting process.
Pro tip: If you find a Horseshoe or a Rabbit, don't bother. Stick to cows, mooshrooms, or horses for leather. Hoglins in the Nether also drop leather, which is a decent alternative if you’re doing a "Nether-only" challenge or just happen to be stuck there.
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Where to Find Bookshelves Without Crafting
Sometimes crafting is a sucker's game. Why spend hours breeding cows when you can just take what someone else already built? Minecraft's world generation is actually pretty generous with libraries if you know where to look.
Villages are your best friend. Specifically, look for the librarian’s house. You can usually tell which one it is because it has a lectern inside or a specific roof shape. Some larger village houses can have two or three bookshelves just sitting there. If you find a "zombie village," it’s even better because there’s no one to get mad at you for breaking their furniture. Use an axe. It’s faster. If you use your fist, you’ll be there all day.
The Stronghold Jackpot
If you’re serious about skipping the grind, find a Stronghold. These underground fortresses almost always contain massive, two-story libraries. We’re talking dozens of bookshelves. One single Stronghold library can give you more than enough blocks to max out two or three enchanting tables.
Watch out for the cobwebs. Bring shears or a sword to clear them out, or you’ll get stuck while a spider nibbles on your toes. Also, remember that breaking a bookshelf with a regular axe only gives you the three books back. You lose the wood. To get the actual block itself, you need an axe with Silk Touch. If you don't have Silk Touch yet, you’ll just have to re-craft the shelves using the books you scavenged and some fresh planks.
Woodland Mansions and Ancient Cities
If you’re feeling brave—or maybe a little suicidal—Woodland Mansions have secret rooms and massive libraries. These are packed with bookshelves. However, considering you have to fight Vindicators and Evokers, it’s not exactly the "easy" route.
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Ancient Cities, introduced in the 1.19 Wild Update, also have "library" structures. They look cool, they're dark, and they're terrifying. You can find bookshelves there, but you have to sneak around the Warden. Honestly, if you're skilled enough to raid an Ancient City for bookshelves, you probably already have a maxed-out enchanting setup. It’s more for the aesthetic or the flex at that point.
Trading with Librarians: The Pro Move
If you want an infinite supply of bookshelves without ever touching a cow, you need to master the art of villager trading. This is what the pros do.
- Find a Villager.
- Give them a Lectern to turn them into a Librarian.
- Check their trades.
Librarians often sell bookshelves for a handful of emeralds. If you turn a zombie villager back into a human, or if you win a Raid and get the "Hero of the Village" buff, those prices drop to almost nothing. You can basically trade a single emerald for a bookshelf. Then, you can break that bookshelf into three books and sell those books back to the librarian or use them for more shelves. It’s an infinite loop. It’s basically printing money, or in this case, knowledge.
Chiseled Bookshelves vs. Regular Bookshelves
In the 1.20 Trails & Tales update, Mojang added Chiseled Bookshelves. These are different. They don't require leather. You craft them with six planks and three wooden slabs.
Warning: Chiseled Bookshelves do NOT power up an enchanting table.
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If you surround your enchanting table with Chiseled Bookshelves, nothing happens. They’re purely for storage and decoration. You can physically put books, enchanted books, or even quills into them. They look amazing for secret doors (since they output a Redstone signal!), but for the love of Steve, don't use them for your enchanting room. Stick to the classic, leather-bound variety for your magic.
Placement Matters
To get that sweet Level 30 enchantment, you can’t just throw the blocks anywhere. There has to be exactly one block of air between the enchanting table and the bookshelves.
The most common setup is a 5x5 square with the table in the middle. You leave a gap, then a ring of shelves. You need 15 bookshelves total to reach the maximum level. If you put a torch, a piece of carpet, or even a blade of grass between the table and the shelf, it breaks the connection. You’ll see the little "galactic" particles stop flying from the books into the table. If those particles aren't moving, you aren't getting the power.
Practical Steps to Get Started Now
If you are starting a fresh world and need bookshelves fast, follow this sequence to avoid wasting time:
- Phase 1: Dig a hole. Find three diamonds and some obsidian. Make the table first.
- Phase 2: Look for sugar cane immediately. Plant it near your base. It grows while you do other things. Never pass it by without punching it.
- Phase 3: Find a village. If there's a librarian, check their trades. If not, start breeding cows with wheat. You need at least two cows to start. Use the "cramming" method (putting 24 cows in a 1x1 hole) if you want to automate the leather collection.
- Phase 4: Once you have 45 leather and 135 paper, craft your 15 shelves.
- Phase 5: Arrange them in a "U" shape or a square around your table, making sure no snow or torches block the path.
Keep an eye out for Silk Touch. Once you get that enchantment on an axe, your life becomes 10x easier. You can just pick up the bookshelves you find in the wild and move them to your base without having to rebuild them from scratch. It saves wood, but more importantly, it saves your sanity.