Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Book Decor

Because I spent the evening covering all my new little sprouts with mason jars to protect them from the frost predicted tonight (I lost a bunch of squash plants to an unpredicted frost last night) and fuming about the cold, dry, wacked-out weather (though we're grateful not to have to deal with tornadoes) I thought I'd just do a little post, with this link from BoingBoing: books as decoration. You can order books by the foot or yard to fill out your library, though they're apparently not in English, so you can't actually read them. I like the idea of the sun-faded ones, for a "Zen" look.

Actually, I like this. I wouldn't do it myself, because how annoying would it be to have a bunch of books you couldn't even read?? But books are beautiful. There's a reason the Pottery Barn catalog has books in almost every furniture-porn shot, and it's only partly snob appeal. Books make a room look useful, and thoughtful, and lived in. Yeah, if you order books by the yard, it's a lie. But they still smell good.

Books as a prestige item? Heck, I'm not goint to argue with that.

6 comments:

x said...

Funny. I just posted on the same BoingBoing story. Our minds seem to think alike but our takes are somewhat different. Still, coincidence? Could it be the universe trying to tell us something? Besides that we both read BoingBoing?

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the Flann O'Brien piece ("Waama, etc") in which he offers his services as a Book-handler to the wealthy but unread gentry. On a sliding scale of prices, his services go from dog-earing random pages and inserting tram tickets as bookmarks, to mauling the spines and adding whiskey stains.

He also offers to add marginalia ("Yes, v. true!" or "But see Homer, Od., iii, 151") and even 'inscriptions' from the authors ("To my old friend, with affection and much appreciation, G.B. Shaw')

And it goes on from there.

Anonymous said...

No kidding (re: weather.) We did our garden yesterday and then the weather forecast changed to near freezing overnight.

In related news, Netflix just served up "An Inconvenient Truth"...

Anonymous said...

as writers, we should be grateful that people are buying books, even if they're not getting read. at least we might be able to fool some publishers into printing more of them.

i know plenty of folk who have wondrous libraries, of which they've read little. if having volumes makes them feel good, bully for them.

M. Sáflo said...

They do this at Ikea. I like to walk into the pre-made rooms and pretend I just teleported into some Swedish person's kitchen.

Anonymous said...

Around here though books are piled in so many places, and so precariously, that they're more earthquake hazards than decorative items. Every once in a while, in the middle of the night, a stack comes crashing down, and we all turn over in our sleep or come half awake and wonder if maybe when we go downstairs to check out the accident site we'll discover the book we can't find and were halfway through.