Maybe I’m just a stuffy old nerd, but I want to subject the author of this horrible home decor tip that’s been making the internet rounds to mandatory literary re-education:
The rationale is that the pages of books provide a more neutral backdrop than those pesky spines, which detract from the look that the designers are going for, which seems to be a bland uniformity.
A quick search revealed that there are a number of designers who think this is a good idea. Here’s a sample from a recent article in Real Simple:
Apartment Therapy followed up with their own article, which featured one couple who’ve decided to drop the pretense of bookshelves and simply admit that books are decorative widgets that you can use to plug up any empty hole in your living space:
Since this is a design trend for empty-headed people, it shouldn’t surprise you that a morning show covered it:
I’m not sure what’s worse — interior design blogger Natasha Meininger’s turning the books the wrong way because she thinks the should only be decorative elements, or the fake sophistication she’s trying to project with her half-French hashtags, #interieurdesign and #interieurs.
Her rationale for her crime-against-knowledge approach to shelving books:
“My book collection is huge so it was important to me from a design standpoint to find a creative way to store my accumulation,” she explained to TODAY Home. “I have read thousands of books. I’ve only reread about 20, so I don’t find it necessary to be able to find a specific title that I’ve already read at the drop of a hat.”
The main argument for why designers like this look is that it shows the whites of the pages, creating a cohesive color palette on your bookshelf. “I love the sculptural effect you get by facing the pages out,” Meininger added.
Here’s the article’s final paragraph:
The bottom line? if you’re not adamantly opposed to hiding the spine of your favorite books and are looking for a new way to decorate your bookshelf, this trend can be a beautiful thing to try.
I suppose it’s not as horrible as their network’s office-decorating idea of buttons that enable you to lock your office door from your desk.
It’s a big enough trend for BuzzFeed to have noticed it. To their credit, their article is titled OMG People, Why Would You Ever Do This To Books?, and its subtitle is even better: What fuckery is this?
One of the designers featured in the Buzzfeed piece seems to be more interested in the attention it brought rather than why the attention was brought in the first place:
I suppose it’s still less pretentious than that trend from the ’70s and ’80s where people got grand pianos not because they could play or wanted to, but simply because it “pulled the room together”, but to my mind, “backwards books” is more than just style of substance — it’s weapons-grade ignorance.
