Bookshelf Porn

Bookshelf Porn is a great website that I discovered a few months back. It focuses not on books themselves, but instead, on images of bookshelves.

I am a collector by nature, and being a visual artist, I'm very interested in the aesthetic appearance of images and objects as well as the arrangement of those objects in groups. I have to say, I've always been skeptical of the old saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover". I might counter that with, "Don't judge a saying by its catchiness". There have been very few great books or records I have owned that have not also had aesthetically beautiful covers.

I have a fairly extensive collection of books, records and CD's... I love the huge amount of information contained within each one of those objects, but I also love the objects themselves. To me, the visual information on the surface of each object is almost as important as the verbal or auditory information contained within the object. This is why I have a bittersweet relationship with the future of media in the digital age. While an e-book contains exactly the same words as its [non-environmentally friendly] hardbound paper cousin, there is a certain amount of craftsmanship and love that went into not only the cover art, but also the choice of paper, the binding, the font... As well as the fact that when you look through your library at the books you've read over the years, you are reminded of how much of an impact that book had on your life at the time and how you have grown since then...