I was thinking about how some boxes have non-parallel walls (eg 5 sides rather than 4) with the idea being that you won't have as much cancellation.

I'm thinking of building a pair of decent bookshelves and I want to make them as good as possible with the least amount of money.

Would it be crazy to cut a bunch of golf balls in half and then glue them to at least 3 sides of the box (then you wouldn't have any parallel walls).

Just an idea, other than displacement it probably couldn't hurt.

I also like the curved/tapered panel idea.

In the big scheme of things, I don't know if the golf balls would be large enogh in relation to the panel size to make much difference....