If you are a book nerd like me, it’s impossible to spend more than 20 minutes online without coming across the following quote from filmmaker John Waters — “If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em!”
Whether or not he actually said the quote doesn’t matter, it sounds genuine enough that it’s taken on a life of its own. Etsy and similar sites are filled with tote bags, shirts, hats, and even fucking decorative pillows bearing the quote. It appeals to a certain type of book snob, of which I am one, but not that type of snob.
I don’t particularly care whether or not you read books as long as you subscribe to my wonderful website, www.sometimesraw.com, but I do care about whether you show those books the proper respect. That’s why I lose my mind whenever I see color-coded bookshelves. Any book nerd knows these insta posts #shelfie or #bookstagram and ways on how to make your bookshelf prettier.
Even the dumbest book you can imagine — which for me is “Hillbilly Elegy” — deserves to be recognized as more than just another prop to make your Zoom background really pop. Or to take the place of actual art in a misguided attempt to simultaneously create an aesthetic and give the impression that you’re well-read. The fact that there are Etsy stores selling books by the foot (2 feet = 60cm) makes my point that this practice is disrespectful to the very purpose of a book.
This is how a bookshelf should look. There’s a little something there for everybody: fiction, non-fiction, periodicals, shit I wrote, shit my friends wrote, my grandma’s super old still functioning typewriter, a candle, a cookbook, some comics and more.
One of my favorite things to do when I’m at someone’s place for the first time is to peruse their bookshelves. I like to see if we’ve read the same things, if they’ve read things I’ve been thinking about reading, and, if they have some books I can borrow. So when I approach their shelf my thoughts are along the lines of, “Wonder if they’ve ever read any Howard Zinn?” and never, “I haven’t read a purple book in a while, wonder if they have any good ones?”
I’m not trying to come off as a hater, at least not entirely. But I do firmly believe that when your bookshelf is designed to be looked at in purely the most superficial way I’m not wrong in assuming you don’t give a shit about what’s inside of those books. If only there was some sort of idiom I could call on to illustrate my point…
Beyond that, I like to think of a bookshelf as a living organism that is always altering its appearance. Organizing it by color ends up making it static. For example, if you take out a blue book, you need to find another blue book to take its place, or if you buy a new book, there better be room in the indigo section, or it won’t be able to find a spot on the shelf.
My mom will probably laugh upon hearing me say this, but I’m not against the concept of organization. All of my graphic novels are on one shelf. Most of my dense-as-hell history books are in their own bookcase. And my Russian novels are spread throughout all of my bookcases because those bastards are so big they work as bookends. Thanks, Tolstoy!
Maybe I’m just being an asshole. I have been working on curbing those urges lately, so I should probably stop being such a snob about books… but I do believe my heart is in the right place. If it wasn’t for the hundreds of books I’ve read over the years I’d be a pretty dull person to hang out with. My love of writing (which is sometimes done in a form called “books”) has shaped everything about who I am, so when I see the writing being treated as an afterthought it pisses me off. “The Master and Margarita” is proudly displayed on my shelf because it’s a brilliant allegory about Soviet Russia with some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever encountered, not because of the cover’s earth tones.
Before I bring this post to a close, there is one book-storage method that is even more infuriating to me than color-coding. It’s whatever is going on behind Jenny Mustard (the Youtube infcluencer) here in her minimalistic living room. This is certified psychopath shit.
Have the books’ spines been removed? Were they painted? I want to fully understand what’s going on here… but I’m not going to wait to start hating on it. This is terrible. The worst.
I’m sorry. I spoke too soon. This is 10,000 times worse than color-coding.
Please sound off down below and let me know how you organize your books (or if you don’t organize them at all). Hell, if you show me an amazing color-coded bookshelf there’s a chance that I might come around on the subject. It’s an incredibly slim chance, but never say never…
