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guardiancomment:

What does your bookshelf say about you?

The man behind the ShareYourShelf.tumblr.com wrote about his project for us:

Your bookshelf is an intimate physical representation of your accomplishments (titles as trophies earned), aspirations (that ever growing to-read pile), associations (that book your boss gave to each employee), personal development (those self-help titles that urged you to talk to strangers), guilty pleasures (50 shades of beach reads), escapes (sci-fi to some, travelogues to others), memories (meeting that author, visiting that indie shop on vacation), interests (the bigger the Star Wars fan, the more Star Wars books) and countless other tells that another reader would unconsciously and immediately compare against their own shelf. And that’s just the ingredients – how you organise, arrange, and display these titles should impart even more insight as to a reader’s personality.

Photographs: Jeff Kaplon (top), Lori McCaskill

I hate this bullshit. I hate the way people buy books - even if they read and enjoy them - and then get a hardon showing them off on some shelf. Reading is such an amazing thing, it changes people’s lives every day. But the elision of “has a ton of books on display” into “and therefore loves books” is the purest delusion. It reeks of vanity, not a love of reading. If you love books so fucking much, hide them, don’t put them on a shelf to show off. Or better yet, donate them to a charity so someone who can’t afford new books can enjoy them too.