What your bookshelf says about you (that the Internet already hasn’t)
On the Institute for the Future of the Book blog last week Sebastian Mary wrote about a recent online discussion based upon the question of whether or not it’s snooping to examine someone’s bookshelves, and contemplated what the results could mean to a relationship (the title of the entry was “would you date someone with no books on their shelves?”). I was personally thrown into the mix because Mary mentioned that my book Print is Dead is a “narrative [that] pits books against the internet.” While this isn’t exactly correctly (I’d say that my book is a narrative that pits one form of technology against another: the printing press versus the Internet), Mary’s comments on the discussion, which is big on the mere presence of books but short on their utility, only reinforces my thesis instead of negating it.
Because, in terms of the “snooping” factor, books on a nightstand are just about at the bottom of the list in terms of potential discoveries. These days most people don’t wait to get inside someone’s apartment to start snooping. Instead, they start doing online research on their potential partners as soon as they possibly can. Indeed, Google is the new digital apartment inside which we all live, with Facebook and Myspace pages being the new bookshelf or nightstand into and onto which we all peek. This is where first impressions and opinions are being made; this where more people are getting turned on or off. True, someone might see the boxset of Man Without Qualities sitting on a bookshelf, and decide that its owner has qualities, but Musil is no match for a Myspace page filled with drunken photos and a Limp Bizkit soundtrack.
Besides, all of this has already happened. I mean, where’s the blog entry about dating someone with no CDs on their shelves? And if someone’s shelves are indeed empty, that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have or like music. These days, a lot of music collections live on innocuous looking hard drives, rather than as a stack of vinyl or plastic. And as books become a smaller and smaller part of our lives, the same will hold true. (In Annie Hall, Woody Allen spots a copy of The National Review in Diane Keaton’s apartment, and is aghast. That can’t happen these days with Slate or Salon.)
However, in the present tense, the fact that books are now mere props in our lives, inert commodities on the same level as the clothes we wear or the paintings we hang on our wall, proves my thesis more than ever. If books were truly alive the discussion would be about reading and talking about them; instead, it’s all about snap judgments or a glimmer of recognition as we peruse them on a shelf, as if they were a police line-up or a collection of mugshots. In fact, not only is print dead, but it also seems — since its true purpose is now to be admired in display rather than read or absorbed — to have been stuffed and mounted
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re: “In fact, not only is print dead, but it also seems — since its true purpose is now to be admired in display rather than read or absorbed — to have been stuffed and mounted…”
So what else is new? Are you suggesting this is a post-digital phenomena? The display of ones books has been an expression of ones status, point-of-view and standing since before Gutenberg. Anyone whose ever seen a collection of National Geographic magazines (which, in many cases have never been opened) sitting on the shelves of someone home knows there must be something going here that’s more about aesthetics and symbolism or “branding” than about the words and images found within the printed work.
As for music, the parade of technologies back from MP3 to tape, vinyl, etc., has been a parade of technologies that are replications of music performed live. To equate the replication of a book in a digital form to music in a digital form dismisses about a century head-start of conditioning listeners to accept something that is recorded as a proxy for something that is “real.” Ironic to note, however, that the “business” of music is quickly moving back to being all about the performance as, when it becomes digital, it’s harder and harder to replicate the business model one has when “displaying” the cover art (or something else physical) is a part of the dynamic.
> If books were truly alive
> the discussion would be about
> reading and talking about them
excellent rejoinder.
-bowerbird
What my bookshelf says about me is that I can read in the tub, in bed, and when the power goes out — that I can share my books without worrying about DRM or computer viruses, and that I’m not dependent on my memory of where I put a file or the search function of my computer to find a bit I want to read again. Also that I’m too cheap to keep investing in batteries and too environmentally conscious to keep adding heavy metals to landfills whenever I need to dispose of them.
The codex ain’t dead, not by a longshot.
Curious, I went in another direction looking at the empty shelf. …er, the resident must live vicariously or virtually. This would not be a heathy, cyborg relationship since there should be dependence of bionic and synthetic on each other. I would look to the 19th century for exemplifications of authentic transaction between technology and the bionic reader. We are now in a regressive period without authentic paradigm shift. Reading modes are compartmented without any appreciation for their interaction.
I think I’ve finally figured out what my dating problem is: I am addicted to reading. The fact that I have books all over my house scares away any male who might be interested in a relationship….Perhaps I will need to give them away to programs which promote literacy in kids, adults and people who are trying to learn English. Although, I don’t think that its fair that they are the only ones who get to have all of the fun! What about shut-ins, people who have to stay off of their feet due to sports injuries? For that matter, what will the people who work in the bookstores and libraries do?
Maybe its my generation; once we boomers are gone, there won’t be any need for books. But when the cable goes out, the computer or electronic game has a glitch, the power goes off, what’s more entertaining than (gasp!) reading an old book that somebody found in the attic.
rabidsamfan is too environmentally conscious to keep adding heavy metals to the landfills…an interesting comment. I am considering purchasing a device to read ebooks and was thinking how many trees might live if I bought less physical books.
My introductory post on if:book a year ago was about why I stopped wanting to write print novels when I fell in love with the internet, and about how, in the face of the internet, print publishing no longer feels like the best platform for a writer who (like me) wants her writing to change the world in some way.
The shift in balance between print and digital is uncontested; it’s triumphalist or apocalyptic rhetoric, and covert pro-digital progress narratives, that I take issue with. I appreciate that taking an extreme position to drum up debate is all part and parcel of selling an argument, whether that be in printed form, or in the public speaking opportunities which - I gather from Chris Anderson and others - make up the more lucrative part of a ‘Big Ideas’ writer’s income these days. But ’stuffed and mounted’? It’s a vivid metaphor, but it doesn’t stand up.
My piece was less about attempting to resurrect the primacy of print books as *the* centrally privileged cultural signifier than it was about the pervasiveness of their power as *a* cultural currency. If by ‘dead’ you mean deposed from their central pedestal, then we’re on the same side; if by ‘dead’ you mean suddenly meaningless, or destined for obsolescence, then there’s more to discuss. And if you tell me to buy the book, I’ve won.
I do believe there is a middle ground, but also a lot of truth to “snooping” someone’s virtual bookshelf - it was only after reading a recently met colleague’s GoodReads profile that I became interested in them. That said, such online browsing (see the film/book/TV interests lists on MySpace) may forward the problematic argument that any kind of online or offline interaction should be grounded in mutualism. I suppose these days a person with a bookshelf at all, real or virtual, is too rare for me to become hung up on someone whose tastes run counter to mine.
yikes! I hope it’s not considered bad form to look at someone else’s bookshelf… like peeking into their medicine cabinet.
If I’m over someone’s house I’ll almost always check out what they have on their shelf… if I went into a house that had book shelves like in the picture, with nothing on them, I would assume either the person is either moving in, moving out, or just bought a new bookshelf.
Excellent and thought-provoking post. One of the reasons I turned to eBooks is that my shelves run over. After spending every weekend for a year stopping at garage sales to buy more bookshelves, my wife threw down an ultimatum. No more paper books. One in-one out. eBooks gave me a lifeline.
Yes, wouldn’t it be nice if books were something we read and discussed, rather than propped up on living room tables?
Rob Preece
Publisher, www.BooksForABuck.com