Most of them do it. Joanna Gaines was the first person I saw do it on an episode of Fixer Upper. Even Erin Napier of Home Town did it a few seasons back.
Although not a new trend anymore, turning books around on bookshelves so that all you can see are white and buff-colored pages is a decorating style that many designers embrace. Creating a neutral palette, the books lining these shelves evoke a minimalist sort of vibe.
The problem, of course, is that no author spends hours laboring over character development, word choice, or effective organization with the goal that once published, the book will be indistinguishable from any of the other books on the homeowner’s bookcase. Writers ply their trade for many reasons, and like most other workers, do enjoy getting paid; however, what drives most writers is the potential to provoke emotion, entertain, or inform the masses.
As the daughter of two writers, I grew up listening to my dad write. Late at night, after working a full day at the Detroit Free Press, he would go up to his office on the third floor of our townhouse and pound away for hours on his avocado green Smith Corona. His books about the GM auto strike of 1972 and the demise of the Homestead steel factory outside of Pittsburgh were obviously not written because he thought they’d be big sellers, but because he thought that people should know about the plight of the worker. In other words, he thought that what he wrote about was important.
Clearly, though, books can be important for different reasons. I absolutely love finding an entertaining book with a crazy plot twist. One of the most memorable books that I read with some of my eighth-grade students one year was Gail Giles’s Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters, which caused one boy to exclaim, “That ending was insane! That’s one of the best books I’ve ever read!” and resulted in all of the boys trying to figure out what the last sentence meant by combing through the book again to look for clues. Now that’s a book.
Because so many doctors, politicians, and pundits are interviewed from their homes nowadays, books have become an increasingly important focal point as most of these experts opt to sit in front of their bookshelves, allowing the camera to take in the numerous tomes behind them. I find this fascinating. I’ve seen books on Grant, de Gaulle, and Gandhi. I’ve spied To Kill a Mockingbird and A Farewell to Arms. Is this just sheer coincidence that so many of these people have adopted their books as their backdrop? Of course not. These interviewees are trying to make the point that they are educated, thoughtful, and intelligent.
While not everyone who strikes a pose in front of a bookshelf is an automatic stable genius, they are clearly aware of the fact that their books speak volumes. If their books reveal a quest for knowledge, a deeper understanding of some topic, or an appreciation for a turn of a phrase or a twist of a plot, what then, do books whose covers are turned around say about their owners?
This is not to say that anyone who revels in rows of blank ecru staring back at him is inherently vacuous, unintelligent, and dull. Nor does it follow that books cannot be artfully arranged. But if a book owner is not even able to identify the books on his shelf, the implication is that this is not someone who might lend or reread a book — or even read in the first place. It suggests that form is more important than substance and that thoughts, ideas, and words don’t matter. Real readers, however, would argue that point. Books that educate, cause us to feel great emotion, entertain, or provoke thought or argument are important. Words matter. Especially now.