I’ve really been enjoying Scott Esposito’s blog Conversational Reading lately. Recently he’s put up a couple of posts that speak to how our love for books goes beyond just the words themselves. But before I get to his posts I had a few thoughts about this as well. One of the reasons the we love books as objects, I think, is because they are all so different from one another in appearance. Whenever a new book comes out, part of the anticipation comes from wanting to see what the book will look like. One of my typical diversions when I worked at the bookstore was to read the “briefly noted” reviews in the New Yorker and then go find the books reviewed, just to see what they looked like. On other occasions my fellow booksellers and I would stand in front of the fiction display table and discuss which book looked the best, rather than which book would be the best to read. Mrs. Millions, who occasionally makes books, got me into the habit of peeking under the dustjackets of hardcover books to see what they look like underneath, and ever since I have been fascinated by the little details — usually stylized monograms — in the canvas hardcovers that most folks never see. There is a reason why we display our books on open shelves. They are a treat for the eye. Which brings me back to Conversational Reading, where Scott posted some images from the amazing experiment at Adobe Bookshop in San Francisco where they rearranged all their books by color. (here’s some more photos). We also treat our books differently than we treat other objects. After a while each book carries with it two stories, the one printed on its pages and the one about the journey the book has taken before it gets to you sometimes through many hands and emblazoned with many jottings and markings. In another post Esposito writes about marking books up as he reads them. He mentions that second hand bookstores often turn these marked up books away, but I, for one, happen to love finding the mysterious notes of a book’s former owners.
On a related note, in keeping with the stories as fetish objects theme, I came upon an interesting project via Pia Z. Ehrhardt’s blog today. It’s called The World’s Smallest Magazine. You send them a book of stamps, and they send you a postcard with a 250 word story on it every month.
