Books as home decor items
Book Decor sells authentically fake libraries. You can pick the antique leather-bound books based on the color of the covers. For example, the "Zen Collection" consists of sun-bleached volumes. There are also limited quantities of "Harry Potter Look" books. Depending on the style, each book sells for around $6 to $28. The books aren't in English though, so unless you happen to know the language a particular book is written in, you couldn't read it if you wanted to. From the Book Decor site:
Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)Decorating a home library is a tough task, especially if you are short on books! Then again, not everyone is fortunate enough to have a few hundred hardbacks on hand. Considering that even the smallest of home studies requires a substantial number of volumes, the cost of filling a few bookshelves can really add up!
That is, of course, unless you consult with a decorative book dealer. As merchants who deal specifically with ornamental books, decorative dealers know exactly how to fill bookcase space with the greatest of ease. As ornamental book merchants, we at Book Décor are well-versed in the art of decorating with books. Our Danish printed, European imported books are sold specifically with interior design in mind.
Many people feel that it's silly to purchase books for pure decorative value. While we certainly understand this, we also savor the opportunity to change the mind of such individuals! Our books are so beautiful on the outside that their interior ceases to be important. What's more, they are available for purchase by the foot as well as the yard. In other words, no more spending hours in used bookstores looking for space fillers. At Book Décor, this process takes a matter of seconds!
the latest
latest episodes
Borges would be simultaneously delighted and ashamed.
Sacrilege! No, no, no! The point of having a library like one pictured is to fill it with books to be read, and books you have read, and reference material! Ack! *twitch*
(Oh to have such space to store the ever-growing collection rather than having to purge it a intervals. *sigh*)
~a bibliophile
Oh my, this comment thread is going to be interesting.
This whole thing makes me sad. Books are beautiful for their knowledge more than their aesthetics. Granted, I have more than a few very beautiful books myself, but I can (and do) open and read them and gain additional benefit from the contents.
Whenever I see photos like those on this site, I'm reminded of lazy theater stage managers and furniture showrooms.
I can't tell... are these books at least castaways from Europe? Or are they actually being made for this purpose?
how big of an asshole do you have to be, to buy leather books, in an language you cannot read, to decorate your house???
>.
every bit of this idea makes me hurt. I love books, reading and reference is my passion. My home is full of books. Books I have read.
no, seriously, how big?
"Our books are so beautiful on the outside that their interior ceases to be important".
Is this for real?? If it is what a pretentious crock of shit. I am one (of many here, I'll bet) who always has too many books for the available shelves in the house. And I LIKE the look of mismatched colors, sizes etc. How do people who are too lazy or stupid to ever crack a book get wealthy enough to afford crap like this?
sigh/grr.
"Our books are so beautiful on the outside that their interior ceases to be important."
Sigh... such is the problem with the minds of the general public. They've applied this kind of thinking to everything, including themselves.
In other words, no more spending hours in used bookstores looking for space fillers.
So, no more of my VERY FAVORITE WASTED HOURS?!?!
Ya know, this is basically equivalent to printing up a bunch of fake diplomas and hanging them on your wall - people will see them and think you're really smart, but in fact you're just slightly more clever than the average idiot.
I guess I'm the only one to not have much issue with this as a bibliophile. If I were rich, I'd get all my hard-back favorite books leatherbound to match and have an interesting library- I like the aesthetics of walls full of worn leather books, but I would read them.
I wouldn't buy these personally. What a waste- I'd never have the room for my real novels! Good insulation, though.
So, no more of my VERY FAVORITE WASTED HOURS?!?!
Au contraire. If everyone's buying from here as space-filler instead of wasting good books from used stores, your selection at the local used book store will be much better!
I'm on-board with this idea, now.
This is a joke, right?
Or do they hand you a DVD with the text for all the volumes? I could see that being a very arch statement.
"Our books are so beautiful on the outside that their interior ceases to be important."
#5, #7, that jumped out at me, too -- the flippant dismissal of knowledge, wisdom, history, and literature in favor of the aesthetic. Goes right along with the cult of the good-looking celebrity and model. It's not what inside that matters -- it's only how you look.
Guess I'm stuck with the ugly trade paperbacks that litter my place and that I "wasted" my time finding.
"Our books are so beautiful on the outside that their interior ceases to be important."
And all this time i've been trying to write good stories. man, i've been wasting my time.
People actually spend hours looking for space-filling books? Why not just throw a nick-knack or two on the shelf? Why put up books you can't read if you wanted to?
I wish I had that library in the picture; I might have enough space for all my books. I think my roommate would appreciate it if I could put my stacks of books under our stairs on actual shelves for awhile. It's kind of a losing battle though - there are just too many good books out there and more are published all the time...
Are fake books like these are the kind that deserve to be burned?
As a reader, book collector, and a person who has a nice looking library because of it, I protest this with every fiber of my being. When the person that owned a "library" such as this showed it to me, I'd beat him about the head and neck.
"Our books are so beautiful on the outside that their interior ceases to be important."
This statement and it's arrogance are appalling.
Well, no one would fool ME if they had that library.
See, when people have a REAL library, the books are all different ages and sizes and bindings. Maybe you'd have a few shelves with consistently leather bindings - an encyclopedia, a set of law or medical reference books, you know... A true bibliophile will also have books piled up on tables or floor, with post-its and bookmarks sticking out all over.
I'm sure their customers are mainly McMansion owners and TGI Fridays.
This stuff infuriates me, too. My wife is tire of hearing me rant when some home decorating TV show talks about arranging books by color and size.
Half Price Books does the same thing, selling "Books By the Yard".
It's maddening.
i'm having my brains replaced with cheese. luckily, because i'm so incredibly handsome, nobody will notice.
Reminds me of this scene from "Black Books":
Customer: "Excuse me, those books, leather bound ones... "
Bernard: "Yes, Dickens. The Collected Works of Charles Dickens."
Customer: "Are they real leather?"
Bernard: "They're real Dickens."
Customer: "I have to know if they're real leather, because they have to go with a sofa. Everything else in my house is real. I'll give you 200 for them."
Bernard: "200 What?"
Customer: "200 Pounds."
Bernard: "Are they leather-bound pounds?
Customer: "No"
Bernard: "Sorry, I need leather-bound pounds to go with my wallet. Next!"
Whenever I see large, filled bookshelves in someone's house, I love to scan through them to see what jumps out. At my house, my libraria (too small to be a library, so it's a library area or libraria) is almost always a conversation-starter. People love to identify which books you have in common, and that gets you talking about books in general--one of my favorite topics.
Besides my principle-based disgust for this decor-only use, I have an even bigger practical issue: you look like a moron when people examine your phony library, which they will certainly do.
I'm having a ball here just hitting reload and watching the comments pile in.
Oh, and just to get my book-wank in- I have an English degree and grew up in a house where books were counted not in numbers, or in board feet, but in square feet. And yes, the vast majority had been read.
It's mostly set designers that use services like this, dudez.
Maybe I'm a jerk or something but it doesn't seem that crazy to me. If my life took off and I made crazy amounts of money I could see owning say a big old english style mansion with a stupid amount of bookshelves. And while I read a fair amount (I moved last month so I know that I own about 2 cubic meters of books), I read mostly new and new-ish books. Which, quite frankly, would look like shit in a wood paneled library. And while if I made start-your-own-space-program amounts of money I could of course have them re-bound in antique leather, I could see filling the more public and aesthetically pleasing library rooms with appropriate looking books and a more utilitarian library room with my amazon-type purchases.
Filling a beautiful library with books that are ugly, or just destroying one to make another media room seems a lot worse to me than buying books that you somehow haven't 'earned', but keep the aesthetic and spirit of the room in some sort of order. Also I don't see how keeping books that you don't or can't read makes you more of an asshole that going to ridiculous lengths to construct a monument to your own erudition by proudly displaying only the books you have read, like a hunter displaying preserved animal heads.
Well I guess you really can't judge a book by it's cover. It's the binding that matters!
Although one thing that comes to mind is that this would make sense for a space or a venue that wanted to have a book theme for a wall or room. NYC's Jekyll & Hyde's comes to mind immediately for it secret doors hidden behind bookshelves (it can be a real pain when you're trying to find the restroom).
Although having them in the local tongue would generally be preferable. Y'know, just in case someone says to themselves "hey I've got all of these books. maybe I should read one of 'em".
Flann O'Brian suggested a much better servicein his Cruiskeen Lawn column: pre-read books. Including ears and comments like "Wrong!", "Hear, Hear!" and so on... Available in three levels, just read a little, profound reading and completely worn out. For a little extra with dedication from the author: "Thanks to my dear friend XY who gave me the Idea to this book" The ideal present for an analphabetist.
Bernard Black would have a field day with this.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CFCYL-ATUp8
enjoy!
This reminds me of places in Second Life where people set up bookshelves - it's entirely for the aesthetics. People feel at-ease when surrounded by shelves of books.
Strand Bookstore has a similar service, but it's mostly aimed at video and movie production. I can also see this service as useful for store displays and suchlike, which is also how the "books by the yard" at Half-Price is marketed. Nobody needs a hollow faux plastic computer on their work desk, but it serves fine in Ikea's showroom.
Beautiful on the outside, gobbledegook on the inside. Much like the homeowner.
It hurts me to see books reduced to mere decoration. What a waste of money. I mean, remainder bins are full of $6 hardcovers that might actually get read someday, and $28 is about the going rate for a brand new hardcover. Just go buy out the stock of the fiction section in your local independent bookstore.
@ #21 - My thoughts exactly!!
I guess this is a bit like buying "blank" glasses to look more smarter. Cuz, you know, everyone always is fooleds by what stuff looks like, not what it really are. I are smert!
Just go buy out the stock of the fiction section in your local independent bookstore.
Nonono! These people aren't going to read! Leave the decipherable books to those who will!
Most books ARE worthless. Danish books chosen for their bindings are particularly likely to be worthless, unless you're keen on bad fiction of the nineteenth century, and bound sets of encyclopedias and (most likely) religious tracts. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that 90% of all the books ever printed are religious tracts. So in that sense, the statement is correct; the bindings of these books comprise 100% of their value.
Books like this are burned, or more accurately pulped, by the hundred million all the time.
Also, this has been going on for centuries, though the market has certainly changed with the influx of Scandihoovian volumes. You'll see these in stores all the time, too, next to the cardboard TVs and stereos. There is a very strong market for Victorian-era books with richly-decorated embossed publisher's cloth covers. For every Mark Twain there are a million or more unspeakably godawful poets and popular novelists.
I wouldn't fret too much. These people are not competing with you for books you'd actually want, so it's no harm done. Me, I have the opposite problem.
“Our books are so beautiful on the outside that their interior ceases to be important.”
So, essentially, the POINT of books. Why else do they exist other than to house the interior?
Having a library of identical looking, foreign-language books reminds me of Ikea. They stock their shelves with skads of the stuff.
The idea of a million dollar library dressed to resemble Ikea is kinda funny.
If you don’t have any books to begin with, don’t have a library.
when I am Emperor, my Library will look much like the photo above. When I seat myself in my comfy wingchair before the curved "bookshelves", I will need only speak the name of the book required. The shelves of leather bound spines before will reveal themselves to be a curtain that slides soundless back, revealing my giant ebook screen - which of course will be connected to my digital collection of all the works of man.
You know, people who don't read buying and storing antique books is better than people who don't read not buying books at all. Because in 5 or 50 or 200 years when they're sold off, then someone else can read them. No?
Otherwise they're thrown away. Or recycled, if we're lucky.
Uh... I'm gonna chime in with the folks who mentioned that these kind of bookshelves are mostly needed for set design, furniture stores, etc.
It's hilarious that the company seems to be trying to branch out into home decor, though.
meanwhile I'm stuck trying to figure out where I could put another bookcase since I've run out of room...
Heres a brainstorm. why not fabricate a row of fake leatherbound book backs that can flip up to reveal your rows and rows of tattered and beloved paperbacks.
Its kind of a truce between the admittedly beautiful aesthetics of leather bound books, and having a real library on hand to be read, which is the whole point of having a library.
I'm going to buy several meters of leather-bound DVD jewel cases to line my shelves, so I can appear cinematically literate.
I have to disagree with those who think that libraries full of same-sized, leather bound books are aesthetically pleasing. Whenever I'm in a place like that I just assume that the books are mainly there for decoration and to impress people (lawyer's offices, etc.), and are rarely, if ever taken off the shelves. It doesn't give me a good vibe to be surrounded by identical books.
Au contraire. If everyone's buying from here as space-filler instead of wasting good books from used stores, your selection at the local used book store will be much better!
This is essentially my stance on it, as well. Gives me an opportunity to paw though books I need/want since schmucks will ignore the real ones in favor of beautiful fake ones.
So go ahead and fill your house with fake books. I'll be reading the real ones quite happily.
As an avid reader (more books/magazines in the bathrooms then some of the rooms of our house), a book collector (still have the Foundation Trilogy paperbacks that my dad got The Good Doctor to autograph to me in the late 1960's), a home decorating maven (watching and critiquing HGTV shows and working on our own house for two decades), and as a former bookbinder (total of five years in two places in New England), this business horrifies me on some many different levels.
Book are SACRED, for Christ's sake, and to use books that you could not even read if you wanted to, is simply beyond the pale.
@34 Exactly!
We had a used bookstore locally that decided to sell off large amounts of it's hardbacks as decor. People were up in arms much like folk are here.
So the owner, to prove this same point, delayed selling them for months and offered them up for free. Tons of people picked through them.
Less than a dozen out of the thousand got taken because most of them were religious tracts, out of date law/government books, and simply bad, forgotten fiction and poetry.
My wife used to work at a furniture store. The chain's home office bought MILES of books to display in their showrooms. It was hilarious to wander around and pick random books from the shelves to see what was there. All the ones I tried were in English, but they ranged from Reader's Digest condensed books to old book club selections to outdated encyclopedias. I never did come across what I would consider a real, readable book.
ah! The vestibule to the antechamber of my summer palace will include the Solicitor's and Proselytizers Facility. A small room of leather bound shelves again. Only this time the uninvited will notice the shelves getting closer and closer...and closer. Bad vibe indeed. Of course, the roses out front will thrive.
I would be more worried that I'd have a library full of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Mien Kampf (or praise for such books) and not even know it since I can't read them.
Seems like a good scam if you're a writer and want to sell some extra books, though! Print em up in Danish and let these people sell them for you! Cha-Ching!
I'm a set designer. I totally see the use of this - though often I'd rather just have the shells of the books filled with foam so they aren't so heavy. Sometimes you just fake the leather thing altogether, but real books are cool if you can afford them!
As for my house I desperately need more space for books - not more books for space!
I have a friend who bought a bunch of old leather bound books at a garage sale for her living room. She then banished all of her husbands reference books to a box so the 'pretty' ones could be on display. sigh.
I once helped out on the shooting of a instructional video. (I wrote the script!)
The actress pretending to use the Canon Instructo (or Samsung Learnalot . . . something like that) did her work on a set with book case. It was crammed with forgettable books.
The one I remember was Andropov: Challenge to the West. (Andropov was a challenge for maybe a year and a half.)
The advent of HDTV is going to make the job of set dressers a lot harder. ("Hey, why does my video diet coach have a shelf full of Y2K preparedness manuals?")
I think that Jay Gatsby just had an orgasm.
“It’s like you can change up. You can say you somebody new. You can give yourself a whole new story. But what came first is who you really are. And what happened before is what really happened. And it don’t matter that some fool say he different, ‘cause the only thing that make you different is what you really do or what you really go through. Like, you know, all them books in his library. Now, he frontin’ with all them books. But if you pull one down off the shelf, ain’t none of the pages ever been opened. He got all them books, and he ain’t read nary a one of them. Gatsby was who he was and he did what he did. And because he wasn’t ready to get real with the story, that shit caught up to him.” – Deangelo Barksdale discussing The Great Gatsby in episode 6, season 2 of the Wire. Teleplay by David Simon
Reminds me of my favorite passage from The Great Gatsby. Now we can all decorate our houses with "bona-fide pieces of printed matter," without going through the trouble of choosing the books or, heaven forbid, actually reading the darned things!
It's a not just a fashion statement, it's that chance we've all been waiting for to teach ourselves Danish (well, all of us other than the Danes, that is).
One of my very favorite quotes from Auntie Mame - Gloria Upson looks over Auntie Mame's gorgeous library, turns to Mame and says "Don't you just think books are so decorative?"
And Mame looks at her like she'd like to strangle her. Classic.
I prefer to buy a leather-bound, acid-free edition of whatever book I want, new or old. I could buy something that will last for several centuries or something that will end up in a landfill in a few years. Plus - ribbon markers! Of course, buying books that are unreadable is silly, but once again: rich person's wall or landfill?
I have a cousin who occasionally gives me a stack of old books for xmas, because, she says, I 'collect books.' If I politely tell her I look forward to reading them, she gets annoyed and explains that the point is that they might be valuable someday, and they look cool and old.
Reading these comments makes me feel I've found my people.
there is such a thing as re-binding. Rip the heart from your favourite and re-skin it in the supple calf-skin of Danish schlock. Plus you get to go all F451 on the leftovers.
I can't believe two Gatsby references popped up in the time it took me to write mine.
Even douchebags need to look like they read books.
what crime would warrant stoning to death by hardcovers?
every true library contains the Good Book
http://www.gearcrave.com/content/images/goodbook.jpg
"Our books are so beautiful on the outside that their interior ceases to be important."
Translation: Pretty to look at, but hollow and vapid on the inside.
Yeah, I can see this being useful for theatrical purposes and hiding secret passageways, but I can really see some rich so-and-so buying these to have the facade of real learnedness.
I think services like this one are great for designing set pieces or scenes where the viewer isn't intended to look at the books (i.e. the Libraries at the Tower of Terror or the Haunted Mansion at Disney's theme parks).
For the average homeowner, it's perfect, too. If I go to someone's home and their library is full of these books, it tells me everything I need to know about them as a person (like just about everyone else here, I'm a bibliophile).
I can only shake my head in sadness and agree with so many people who've already voiced my opinion for me. I only hope I never meet someone who owns such a library. I'd hate to have to explain to the courts why I committed murder.
#58- I too have found my people! I'm in the process of moving, which involves packing dozens and dozens of boxes of books that I've collected all my life, read and re-read every one. My new house has an extra room which is to be my dream library. My friends shake their heads and ask "why"? But they are my children! I can't part with a single volume, not even the cheapest paperback.
#61 posted by Rick. , May 28, 2008 11:44 AM
Even douchebags need to look like they read books.
________________________
dude, you owe me a new keyboard for that...this one is now covered in spit out coffee.
thanks for making my morning full of laughter.
I really have no problem with this. And yes, I love books.
I just think it's a little silly to use real books. Why not make just the bindings and then put in a plastic border that looks like pages? Nobody's going to pull out a book to see if there's anything in it, and if they do, who cares? You've got a pretty wall.
Stefan Jones @ 51:
Heh...reminds me of the episode of Battlestar Galactica where Edward James Olmos picks up his reading glasses off some old volume of classic literature--a rare surviving remnant of humanity's destroyed culture that he's been looking through. Freeze and zoom the DVD...oh noes, it's a Reader's Digest condensed book collection. Dammit, I wanted an in-joke.
I'm amazed by the level of hostility toward the art of bookbinding in this thread. Let me edit that down a mite. I'm amazed by the hostility in this thread. People collect books with decorative bindings. I have a lovely copy of The Roman Empresses which I will probably never read. But it's bound in Tyrean purple with lurid gold illustrations on the cover. It is a work of art in and of itself without reference to its contents, which are turgid Edwardian prose. I don't read my facsimile copy of The Book of Kells. I look at it because it's pretty. Nobody reads the Codex Hammer or curls up in bed with a Gutenberg Bible. So who wants to call me a douchebag?
yeah, but we know you are ABLE to read them
Gosh, I didn't realize there was a market for law books (halfpricebooks.com sells them by the yard). I was dreading having to chuck them all into the trash.
Anyone want about two yards? They're "aesthetically pleasing" if you don't care what is in them. They're highlighted appropriately, so that everyone can see what they've been read. People will surely think that you went to law school. All the usual law school subjects covered, plus copyrights, trademarks, antitrust, and other technology focused legal areas. Make me an offer.
#71 Antinous
I'm actually guilty of the same thing. I do own a few books strictly for the collectors value or the art of the binding. I have a first edition printing mass market paperback of Issac Asimov's 'I Robot'. I wouldn't dare read it because of it's age and it's quite decorative on a shelf with other such books.
However the book itself is written in English, and while I haven't read 'that copy' I have read the text of the book elsewhere (and many more besides). If I ever decided to do so I could easily take it out of it's sleeve and enjoy it as previous owners have. I could enjoy it as it was meant to be enjoyed.
My real problem stems from my personal beliefs about aesthetics and functionality. Much like others on this thread I find the idea of a non-functional library created with the sole purpose of appearance in mind as some sort of 'status symbol' to be offensive to some portion of my psyche. Having a beautiful library with a purpose beyond it's facade is so much more exciting than just a good looking wall of books.
Some decades ago, I worked at the Doubleday book store on 5th Ave. & 57th St. in Manhattan.
One day, an older (50s?) guy came in with a much younger woman. He told one of the salespeople that he was setting her up in an apartment, and needed books to fill the shelves. He didn't care what books — just books.
So, he bought the entire hundred-and-something volumes of the Modern Library for starters, along with many, many other books. The whole time, his companion, presumably his mistress, never said a word, just clung to her book sugar daddy.
I don't know if he or his tootsie ever read any of the tomes, but I somehow doubt it.
The only part that offends me here is that the books are not necessarily in the reader's native language. I can deal with wanting to buy these books in bulk to fill up a lovely new room. Have the balls to buy them in english(or whatever your chosen reading language) though.
At least be *open* to the idea of reading them one day.
This reminds me of the end scene in Minority Report where the psychic bald crime zombies were permitted to grow back their hair and live in a farm house filled with---Books! Oodles and oodles of leather bound Books!
They seemed more like "Books" the noun, rather than books that were actual books. Books became a symbol for books!
I wasn't even sure what the message was exactly. The implication seemed to be that this was an idyllic end for the much abused psychic bald chicks, but why books, and why so MANY books, and why were they all identically leather bound? They seemed to have been transported to this magical land where people do nothing but quietly read noun books for days on end and do little else. It seemed so arbitrary and weird. I can't imagine that anyone saw that movie and actually bought that ending.
Anonymous @ 77: A opposed to being open to the idea of learning a new language?
Antinous: Ok, you've mentioned binding twice now. What are the leatherbound editions like Subterranean Press do like? They never talk about the bindings or include a picture. Are the books sewn? Are they actually better objects, or just limited edition and different materials?
Because while one certainly can wrap a paperback novel in leather covered boards, the spine isn't going to be any stronger than it was before, and I'm not convinced it's going to make the book last any longer. And sadly, most hardcover books these days are just paperbacks with cardboard covers.
Are they actually better objects, or just limited edition and different materials?
Ideally, they're better built and sturdier. I definitely prefer sewn books. They don't have to be leather. I have a first American edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom that's bound in buckram, but it's as beautiful in its spare, sand-colored simplicity as gilded leather would be. The Roman Empresses are in buckram as are a couple of beautiful editions of East of the Sun, West of the Moon (with a restored binding) and The Rubaiyyat, both with superb color plates with those little tissue paper protectors. I have read all of them, but really I could just sit one on the table and stare at it for an hour. They're magically beautiful art objects.
"short on books"
What might THAT be like???
As an ex- bookstore owner, let me say that I don't care what people do with books—just don't give them to me!
Gatsby went to Oxford.
my personal library had (last time I counted) over 1,250 books, 9+ bookshelves overflowing .....
oldest? "Tales of Space and Time", by H.G. Wells, Harvard University Press, 1896, 1st edition.
My books are not 'decoration'. I don't give a damn if anyone EVER sees them (but me and my family and friends). And if I ever visit someone's house to find 'decor' of books that I damned well know they've never read ....
I hope they'll let me have my books in my prison cell.
I'd rather they just made leather dustcovers for my manga and Star Trek novels.
OK, part of that is a lie: I sold most of my Star Trek novels. Amend to "ugly college textbooks."
Antinous: Ideally yes. I was curious about sources for new leather bound books, since you mentioned preferring them in #57.
I worked for Half Price books, and yeah this is VERY common. I'm not surprised at all.
I think this is great!
Let's be honest - tons of books get thrown away. Just a year ago, a Kansas City bookstore owner started to actually burn them - because he couldnt sell or gift them, and it would cost too much to truck away.
In steps some company that is turning books into decoration... so what? In 20-50 years, those books might be the last existing ones of their printings. At least they're being preserved for a while.
The idea of people having this kind of space to fill up with books, and then filling it up with fake books, is incomprehensible to me.
I do like beautiful books as beautiful objects. It just seems awful to have a whole fake library. It would be even worse if they were ugly I guess. This is not an attack on pretty books themselves. It's the whole library that's the problem.
But I'm the sort of person who really dislikes fake brick, fake stone, fake plants - all that junk. and yes i work in the theatre . . .
I've heard about these kinds of services, and I find them revolting. Not to mention that having hundreds of books, all similarly bound and aesthetically arranged, is a dead giveaway that the library is there for appearances' sake.
My sweetie and I have roughly a thousand books between us. About 90% have been read. The remainder are waiting to be read. Very few of them match in any way. Our library has grown organically and is therefore cluttered and comforting.
Having said that, I have to admit that I'm often fascinated by the books used as props in furniture stores. One time at Ikea I spent some time checking out their prop books; they generally use many identical copies of remaindered Swedish novels. I picked up one that looked a little different and discovered that it had actually belonged to somebody; it had handwritten notes and a Swedish newspaper article taped inside the cover.
I came this close to stealing it. Still kinda wish I had.
This behavior has probably been going on as long as there were books, though it took the explosion of literacy in modern times to make it a commercial phenomenon.
Lucian's The Ignorant Book Collector
Once when I was in a used book store I saw a woman walking around with throw pillows, trying to find some matching volumes. How can people be so shameless?
Oh, come on. Everyone's bought a dog to match their shoes at least once.
my dog munches my shoes
"When books turn faux, they may cease to be a freind." from Dumbing Down of America
If I could afford (both in monetary and wall space terms) that acreage of shelving I'd feel duty bound to fill it with books that I'd actually read. As it is I have books overflowing boxes, piled up against the bedroom walls and stuffed under the stairs.
So it's like penis, or I guess brain in this case, compensation for pseudo-intellectuals?
Bahaha haaaa I wrote an April fools' message on a librarian listserv in 1995 pretending to look for something like this for my then employer, to be used for a TV interview set for the CEO. Of course, because it was for looks and not books, money was no object. I should ask to be cut in for a piece of the action. Or at least get some pretty books.
A Goth club I used to frequent had only candles for illumination and heaps of books everywhere. For months I thought they were only for atmosphere until one night my date fell asleep and I picked one up. A biography of Genghis Khan. I looked at more of the books. Art, music, fiction, biography, etc. Every book was carefully chosen for that club. I finished reading that book at dawn when they closed for the day & kicked me out. I read many more of their books over the next few months, and when the club closed for good I gave them $5 for that Genghis Khan paperback, which I still have. It's usually disappointing but now I always look at the decorative books in the hope of turning up something interesting.
i worked for a very large, well known used and rare bookseller for years, and can tell you that they and many other used bookshops derive a significant amount of income from selling decorator collections. It is a way to rehome books that won't ever sell, and pay for shelf space for other books which will be sold in months or years. Our policy was not to destroy books we couldn't use, but to sell as deco sets, or give them away.
i'm tempted to mock people who don't have libraries of their own, too, but i'm glad they want those books.
@98 RossInDetroit, years ago I was at a restaurant with friends and we started reading one of the old books they had sitting around as decor, and the opening was so interesting I wound up eventually buying a copy elsewhere for myself. In the Bishop's Carriage, by Miriam Michelson, 1904.
And since I'm having Little Brother reference withdrawal symptoms, I note that the opening of Cory's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town starts with a very loving description of filling a house with bookshelves and then filling the shelves with boxes of books all carefully bought and stored over decades, then starting to read through the books now that there's finally time for it. Given that Cory's mentioned he has 10,000 books or so stored across at least three countries, I wonder if life will imitate art.
For serious book lovers with serious money who have time to read but no time to shop for books, there are services that will interview you to find out your tastes in books, and then go get them for you. First edition To Kill a Mockingbird is apparently very popular (as well it should be).
The Forbes FYI March 10th issue had an article about it.
Personally I like the thrill of the hunt, but I have time on my hands, as witnessed by my posting here.
There is wallpaper out there that does the same exact job with far less insult to the literary community.
Time to show a Danish point of view :-)
I once listened to an interview with a bookseller who shipped all these Danish books to the States, and he was not the least sorry. Asked about wasting cultural heritage to ignorant Americans, he answered that the books were pulp from the pre-industrial age, made in extremely large quanta. At that time both leather and labor were cheap, so ever pulp were bound nicely. The (crappy) writers were not known by living generations of Danes anymore, only small numbers saved by the national libraries.
The rest was just throwaway fil.
Even as a librarian I do not regret losing all those books to decor. Books are perhaps iconic, but not holy.
At a national election about 6 years ago one of the two state minister candidates lost many votes by ripping pages out of a book written by his opponent 10-20 years ago to show his disgust at a national TV debate. He lost the election.
Book burnings in Germany more that 50 years ago are not forgotten. So that's the power of books; not tons of badly written pulp.
In addition to The Strand, the used bookseller for which I used to work also deals in "Books By The Foot." Many of these books are Russian, at least at this chain. In addition to movie sets, they also use them for model homes in real estate, and they'd even outfitted a men's shoe store in Atlanta, I believe, where the walls were lined with bookshelves, save for a single one full of shoes. Leather overdose.
On SNL Fernando said,
"It's not how you feel,
it's how you look."
Likewise this company feels
You should judge the cover,
Not the book
"Our books are so beautiful on the outside that their interior ceases to be important."
Could be said of some people.
@ ANTINOUS: "every true library contains the Good Book" Never! I am inordinately fond of my hip flask, and would never disguise it. If it's cold enough for a jacket, it's cold enough to need a flask of rum...
JED ALEXANDER: The trick is, to switch off when OT Cruise gets put in that pod thingumabob. Then, it's a good movie.
Apropos faux-libraries, I'm in two minds having read all the comments; decorative libraries for fuckwits are clearly repugnant, but if the do preserve some good books by accident, well...
BTW, I'm always prepared to have a read of the decorative books on the walls in Ye Olde Pubbe (my favourite REAL pub has a free library of books in the corner)
I didn't say that.