Upstairs, Downhill: Books, books everywhere but not a page to read
After posting a photo recently of a designer who suggested stuffing books into slats in the ceiling (printed pages being used as a form of ersatz insulation), Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing this week had another photo that shows how books are being used in some people’s lives; this time it’s as decoration for a staircase. According to the designer, “Limited by space, we melded the idea of a staircase with our client’s desire for a library to form a ‘library staircase’ in which English oak stair treads and shelves are both completely lined with books. With a skylight above lighting the staircase, it becomes the perfect place to stop and browse a tome.” However, it also becomes the perfect place to stick large amounts of a medium that is becoming increasingly unused in our everyday lives. I mean, knowledge may be power, but books are increasingly becoming lumber. And while scaling this staircase no doubt gives the owners of this Victorian row house a certain tweedy and nostalgic thrill — “Hey, sweetie, remember when we had time to read books instead of spending our time having a designer decorate our Victorian row house?” — I can’t help but think that they’re going to be doing a lot more treading the stairs than reading the books.
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Whatever validity your arguments have are undone by your uncompromising assertion that physical books are nothing more than clutter. Whether someone is engaging with the ideas contained within books or not cannot be determined by where they keep those books when they aren’t being used. If your argument is, “Exactly! The books aren’t being used!,” I’d counter with: Neither is every document on my hard drive or every web page I’ve ever bookmarked at a single moment. I use a small number — sometimes only one! — at a time and keep the rest stored for future use.
What you have not dealt with is the easy — sometimes too easy — accumulation of electronic data at rates faster than our ability to use and consume it. I have ebooks that I have downloaded that I still haven’t opened, audiobooks from Audible that I still haven’t listened to, but just because they’re bits on a spinning hard drive doesn’t mean that they are any more dynamic than a paper-and-ink book on a shelf that I have read and chosen to keep. In fact, those undifferentiated bits are easier to forget about than a physical object on a shelf that seems to rebuke me for every day that passes without my reading it or passing it along to someone who would.
You need to accept that your aversion to print books and physical media may be your own individual aesthetic bent and not signs of some great foresight. People who do like the physical presence of books like them, the same way some people like hardwood floors or frou-frou lampshades or a stark, minimalist living rooms or the color green.
If you’re trying to sell a future, stop making it seem so unpleasant and unyielding. Sell IT, and what it can bring, and stop standing on the corner screaming at us that we’re stupid and stuck in the past.
You make some good points, but I think you’re not understanding mine. What I’m bemoaning is the fact that books are losing utility in our lives. People used to look at a row of books like it was a buffet; they wanted to consume them. But, increasingly, people are looking at books like they’re wallpaper; they just want to stare at them. I just think it’s silly when people celebrate books as decoration instead of, you know, sitting down and actually reading them.
I see your point, Jeff, but I think the term “bemoaning” that you use is important. You are lamenting the death of books.
But really, in this and the other post you ultimately point out what lengths people are going to to keep books in their lives. Maybe you consider that the equivalent of a photo of a lost relative, but in my view we are growing more creative about book-keeping as the pressures from other media close in.
What if those folks have read every one of those books ten times, in which case they value those read books so much that instead of throwing them out they want to keep them in their lives? In other words, books can have a meaning and value beyond the level of encyclopedic reference point.
Jeff, I don’t buy your assumption that these designs are just about books as decoration. Note the phrase “limited by space” in the passage you quote. These designs are presumably intended for homes that are already over-run with books.
No doubt there are people who fetishize books — for instance Jeff Bezos talking about how he loves old books and owns several first editions (in some recent interview; I can’t remember where). I find *that* weird. The people who stuff books into their staircases and rafters seem more likely to actually use their books.
“But, increasingly, people are looking at books like they’re wallpaper; they just want to stare at them. I just think it’s silly when people celebrate books as decoration instead of, you know, sitting down and actually reading them”
People have always used books as mere decoration. I remember back in the 70s an uncle of mine having rows of brand-new leather-bound classics (Dickens etc.) lining the shelves of his suburban living room. He’d never read any of them, they just looked nice to him and imparted an air of traditional solidity. You never seen those ads for libraries of classic books? They’ve been around for ever.
And how do you know these other people aren’t sitting down and reading their books? What special insight do you have into their daily lives? As Gerard said above, just because you aren’t “using” something on a daily basis doesn’t make it useless. Should I throw away all my records too? Not to mention the many, many gigs of crap on my hard drive?
True, books have always been totems and trophies, but I indeed think that an important line has been crossed when we go from placing books on a mantle to making a mantle out of books.
Well, if you’ve no room to put them anywhere.
Oh right, sorry, you should throw them away.