There is a growing fashion for fake books. Not fake as in written by a series of AI prompts, but fake as in things – cleverly painted empty boxes, or a façade of spines glued to a wall – designed to mislead the casual onlooker into thinking that they are books.
A recent New York Times article highlighted the trend. It featured various interior designers offering spurious arguments in favour of fakes over real books: they can be a practical solution for hard-to-reach shelves; a smart example of upcycling unwanted volumes destined for landfill; useful and humorous storage boxes. Neat, quirky design solutions are, however, the least of it. This fashion signals a profound shift in our attitude to books. Rather than perceiving them as holders of information, stores of stories, we are increasingly perceiving them as just things – albeit pretty things.
If we arrange our shelves by colour gradient, we might easily look to buy a blue book rather than a great novel
Books have never been more beautiful.
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