{"id":1542,"date":"2010-08-02T09:02:16","date_gmt":"2010-08-02T08:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookleteer.com\/blog\/?p=1542"},"modified":"2010-08-01T21:22:43","modified_gmt":"2010-08-01T20:22:43","slug":"for-the-love-of-a-book-shelf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/2010\/08\/for-the-love-of-a-book-shelf\/","title":{"rendered":"For the love of a book shelf"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nPhotographs of Macleods secondhand bookstore, Vancouver, Canada and a bookshelf, from bookshelfporn.com<\/em><\/p>\n

As if to emphasise James Bridle<\/a>‘s point that books-as-objects act as souvenirs of the reading time<\/a>, a few days ago I came across the blog bookshelf porn<\/a>. The premise of the blog is simple – it shows photographs of bookshelves, contributed by readers, and adds a new picture of two every day. But I never would have imagined the variety of book shelves that exist, or how beautiful they look when they are collected together in this way.<\/p>\n

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This isn’t all about aesthetics – this is a blog with a message. While there’s very little text on the site occasionally, in between the photographs, there is a quote such as this one from The New Yorker’s The Book Bench writing about Bookshelf porn:<\/p>\n

“Featuring a book on your bookshelf is akin to displaying a trophy. You’ve accomplished something in reading a book; it feels like a victory. The opportunity to display your literary conquests in unique or unexpected ways is something I will greatly miss with e-readers.”<\/em><\/p>\n

This message – that bookshelves have a beauty and purpose that is not found in e-readers – is carried across the site. And looking at the photos I couldn’t really argue with that, however, I am excited to see how e-readers might begin to address that challenge…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photographs of Macleods secondhand bookstore, Vancouver, Canada and a bookshelf, from bookshelfporn.com As if to emphasise James Bridle‘s point that books-as-objects act as souvenirs of the reading time, a few days ago I came across the blog bookshelf porn. The premise of the blog is simple – it shows photographs of bookshelves, contributed by readers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,63],"tags":[42,34],"class_list":["post-1542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration","category-sharing","tag-book","tag-libraries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1542"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1571,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions\/1571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}