Fake Books Are a Real Home Decor Trend (nytimes.com) 98
If it looks like a book, feels like a book and stacks like a book, then there's still a good chance it may not be a book. From a report: Fake books come in several different forms: once-real books that are hollowed out, fabric backdrops with images of books printed onto them, empty boxlike objects with faux titles and authors or sometimes just a facade of spines along a bookshelf. Already the norm for film sets and commercial spaces, fake books are becoming popular fixtures in homes. While some people are going all in and covering entire walls in fake books, others are aghast at the thought that someone would think to decorate with a book that isn't real. "I will never use fake books," said Jeanie Engelbach, an interior designer and organizer in New York City. "It just registers as pretentious, and it creates the illusion that you are either better read or smarter than you really are."
Ms. Engelbach said she has frequently used books as decor, at times styling clients' bookcases with aesthetics taking priority over function, which is a typical interior-design practice. At Books by the Foot -- a company that sells, as its name suggests, books by the foot -- one can purchase books by color (options include "luscious creams," "vintage cabernet" and "rainbow ombre"), by subject ("well-read art" or "gardening"), wrapped books (covered in linen or rose gold) and more. The tomes are all "rescue books," ones that would otherwise be discarded or recycled for paper pulp, said Charles Roberts, the president of Books by the Foot's parent company, Wonder Book. During the pandemic lockdown in 2020, remote work created increased demand for the company's services. While it mostly specializes in the sale of real books, the company has also dabbled in the world of faux ones.
The book seller has cut books -- so only the spines remain -- and glued them to shelves for cruise ships,"where they don't want to have a lot of weight or worry that the books will fall off the shelves if the weather gets bad," Mr. Roberts said. There are other, sometimes counterintuitive, uses for fake tomes as well. Although it has the capacity to hold more than 1.35 million of them, many of the books in China's 360,000-square-foot Tianjin Binhai Library aren't real. Instead, perforated aluminum plates emblazoned with images of books can be found, primarily on the upper shelves of the atrium. While the presence of artificial books in a place devoted to reading has been widely criticized -- "more fiction than books," one headline mocked -- it remains a buzzy tourist attraction. After all, the books don't need to be real if it's just for the 'gram.
Ms. Engelbach said she has frequently used books as decor, at times styling clients' bookcases with aesthetics taking priority over function, which is a typical interior-design practice. At Books by the Foot -- a company that sells, as its name suggests, books by the foot -- one can purchase books by color (options include "luscious creams," "vintage cabernet" and "rainbow ombre"), by subject ("well-read art" or "gardening"), wrapped books (covered in linen or rose gold) and more. The tomes are all "rescue books," ones that would otherwise be discarded or recycled for paper pulp, said Charles Roberts, the president of Books by the Foot's parent company, Wonder Book. During the pandemic lockdown in 2020, remote work created increased demand for the company's services. While it mostly specializes in the sale of real books, the company has also dabbled in the world of faux ones.
The book seller has cut books -- so only the spines remain -- and glued them to shelves for cruise ships,"where they don't want to have a lot of weight or worry that the books will fall off the shelves if the weather gets bad," Mr. Roberts said. There are other, sometimes counterintuitive, uses for fake tomes as well. Although it has the capacity to hold more than 1.35 million of them, many of the books in China's 360,000-square-foot Tianjin Binhai Library aren't real. Instead, perforated aluminum plates emblazoned with images of books can be found, primarily on the upper shelves of the atrium. While the presence of artificial books in a place devoted to reading has been widely criticized -- "more fiction than books," one headline mocked -- it remains a buzzy tourist attraction. After all, the books don't need to be real if it's just for the 'gram.
First book: (Score:1, Funny)
"Everything Everywhere is Fake and Rigged, by Tondald Drump"
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Wow...that guy really (still) lives in your head, doesn't he?
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"Everything Everywhere is Fake and Rigged, by Tondald Drump"
How about this set of fake books - Twitter Accounting Practices and Financial Records - The Jack Dorsey Years
TFA nails it (Score:5, Insightful)
"Pretentious" is the perfect description. Shallow people who think a good TikTok video is high art, trying to show how "old school" they are. "Affectation" would be another good description.
I used to wonder why some people seemed dedicated to being something they aren't. Then, I met them and talked to them, and it made sense.
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Who reads what where is perfectly fine, but the entire logic behind fake books is one of two things. Either just "this is a thing in my memory so I like it and that's OK" or "I want to look like I am well-read when I am not."
In the latter case, the implication is that they think that people who read books are smart, and they are pretending to be that thing, so they are explicitly, literally, and by definition "pretentious".
Re:TFA nails it (Score:4, Interesting)
My uncle had a book shop back in the 1980s and people used to come in all the time and ask for, eg. "Three feet of blue books".
They had no intention of ever reading them and they didn't care what the titles were. It was just decoration.
I once knew somebody who had a chess board on his coffee table but didn't know how to play. Same thing.
Re:TFA nails it (Score:4, Interesting)
What, and who, you are describing is a real phenomenon. But having recently gone down an amateur film making rabbit hole, the first thought that ran through my head when I read "Three feet of blue books" was production design. The world is large, weird and complicated and motivations vary.
Re:TFA nails it (Score:4, Interesting)
I volunteer in a non-profit used book store and that still happens. It's typically a designer looking for some type of commercial setting rather than personal house decoration. Another person turns 'interesting' covers into clocks or other wall art that she sells at the local swap-meet or on customer request. And yet another person looks for books with thin onionskin type paper that she folds for some other type of project. I don't like the idea of destroying books, but we have so many, and at a buck or two a pop it's better than they're literally being trashed.
Re:TFA nails it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:TFA nails it (Score:4, Funny)
Funny, I'd use "pretentious" to describe people who think that the measure of a person is how many books they've read. Or at least pretended to read. Let me tell you, a person who, say, goes to scholar.google.com and reads journal articles on topic X knows a heck of a lot more about the subject than some smug person who read some mass market pop-culture book on the topic.
Funny, I'd use pretentious to describe people who think that the measure of a person is how many journal article they've read, and looks down on those who educate themselves with mass market pop-culture books instead of doing that research themselves.
Re:TFA nails it (Score:5, Informative)
>>Funny, I'd use "pretentious" to describe people who think that the measure of a person is how many books they've read.
Pretentious is pretending to be something you're not (note that the words pretentious and pretend come from the same origin). Showing off books you haven't read is pretentious. Showing off books you have read might be ostentatious, but I wouldn't call it pretentious.
"Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one." - Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
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"Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one." - Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
The Earl's advice rings a little hollow today. I've been wearing a wristwatch since I was 10, when my mother got tired of me not coming home in time for dinner.
Ya see kids, there once was a time when we left the house and were so far away from our parents and all other adults, at age 10, that we were out of earshot. Appalling and terrifying to you, I know, but it happened.
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Re:TFA nails it (Score:4, Insightful)
You know what's worse? People who buy books but never read them.
My ex-wife's brother did that. He had full collections of books, not cheap, but never opened one.
Re:TFA nails it (Score:4, Insightful)
Well it's definitely not worse. At least your ex-wife's brother was helping to fund authors. Still a bad habit, but not worse than buying fake books.
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You may have a point here :)
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I have a pile of books I haven't read yet - I acquire books faster than I can read them.
Why? They're interesting to me, and I want to read them, just I don't have the time to. Chances are if I waited to buy the books, they'd go out of print and I'd have to shell out more money to find a used copy somewhere (half my Amazon wishlist now consists of bo
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You must have missed the "never opened one" part.
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It could just be pragmatic. When interviewing over video link, having a bookshelf in the background might influence the interviewer. Same for politicians being interviewed from home, it might influence some voters. Politicians can also select the books to send a particular message, even if they interviewer won't necessarily broadcast every word they say, or ask them certain leading questions.
And this is different how? (Score:3)
"It just registers as pretentious, and it creates the illusion that you are either better read or smarter than you really are."
But then, so does a wall covered in real books. Especially real books you've never read.
Re:And this is different how? (Score:4, Insightful)
so does a wall covered in real books. Especially real books you've never read.
A wall covered in real books you haven't read is pretentious. But if you think a wall covered in real books you have read is, then that's actually saying something about you.
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But if you think a wall covered in real books you have read is, then that's actually saying something about you.
Eventually you have to either admit to being a hoarder or being pretentious though if you haven't just donated your books after reading them. I qualify as a bit of a hoarder, but I've still donated the vast majority of books I've ever bought. Once a year I just fill up a few boxes and take them to goodwill. I still have four Ikea bookshelves filled with books I can't seem to part with, but every year I eventually come to grips with being able to let go of a few more.
Then again, if it wasn't for my wife I wo
Re:And this is different how? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's like saying you're a hoarder for having physical media instead of streaming everything. It doesn't have to be on display, of course. But books are hard to sort through when they're not. That's different from DVDs that are ripped to a media server and the originals are in compact binders. But it's still keeping the media because physical possession has value.
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It doesn't have to be on display, of course. But books are hard to sort through when they're not.
Only if you're better at organizing them on the shelf than in other storage. There's no reason they can't be organized just as well in a climate controlled storage locker.
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Having read a lot of books is one thing. I've read, perhaps, thousands of books.
Feeling the need to show off how many books I've read by covering a wall with them is something different. That's bragging about how well read, and presumably, therefore, smart, one is. Which is to say, pretentious.
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There are other, more efficient, cheaper, and better for the books ways to keep and store books than on display in your living room.
Which leads me to believe that the "on display" part has significant value for you.
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yes, i like the look, color, smell and memories my books bring to me. whatever you think of me for having them is, well... thats on you.
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We have a full copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1969. We certainly haven't read it all.
It's just too beautiful to throw out, (and still smells fantastic) so it sits on one of our bookshelves.
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I lived in England for a while and saw a lot of fake electric fireplaces [flames.co.uk]. At first I thought they were incredibly cheesy because they didn't even look real. But then I realized they were so unreal, they weren't actually trying to trick anybody - they're just a reminiscent way to decorate a wall heater. Somehow that made me feel better about them.
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"It just registers as pretentious, and it creates the illusion that you are either better read or smarter than you really are."
But then, so does a wall covered in real books. Especially real books you've never read.
My walls are covered in real books, and I've probably only read about half of them. I simply have a bad habit of buying more books that interest me than I can reasonably read, mostly because I've struggled to change my book buying habit after having kids 8 years ago (when my available time to read nose dived).
So while I meet the definition of pretentious you listed, I've still donated the majority of books I have ever read. I'd still call myself more of an undisciplined spender, hoarder, and optimist than p
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Tell these people that since they like books, they should read The Great Gatsby. If they read about his library, you'll probably have to explain the meaning to them.
Exactly! This isn't a trend. This has been a thing since books were created!
But where... (Score:1)
.... but where am I going to put all my books if I use fake books for decoration?
I've moved over 30 times in my life and have lost untold numbers of books, some I wish I had not gotten rid of, due to moving capacity issues. The three large bookshelves in the living room are now full, again, and the shelves on all the end tables are also stacked high with books in one state of being read or another... and I've got boxes of mostly-read books needing a bookshelf.
Illiteracy has become a bit of an epidemic, hasn
Re:But where... (Score:5, Insightful)
Illiteracy is not quite descriptive - aliteracy, maybe. They *can* read, they just don't. Add in "what do I care about what old white people said 260 years ago?" and "I read on the internet, why kill trees?" with their kindle full of John Grisham, I can see how they wouldn't consider it a priority.
You can see the effects, idiots fall for absolutely *ancient* scams that Shakespeare thought were old had, they know absolutely nothing of history, so they have no idea how well off they are, enabling them to complain and claim persecution for the most trivial perceived slight.
I hate to tell you this, (Score:2)
but all those Unleashed and Manning series books are not so esthetic.
Addendum (Score:1)
I should qualify this. The Manning series often has esthetic covers in terms of say being on a coffee table, but not when mass filed in a bookshelf.
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No idea what those are. Most of the books I read have a "first published" date 20-70+ years ago.
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Same boat. I've moved all over the place and lost or gotten rid of more books than I can count. I had plastic tubs full of books, mostly cheap paperbacks that I bought from second had book stores. When I got married, my new wife needed space and guess what she insisted we get rid of?
That should have been my first clue she was bats ass crazy. Who doesn't want a old tub of classic star trek and star wars paperback? Apparently, the local library and used bookstore didn't. They took the other books
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I know people like the tactile nature of physical books. But e-ink beats paperbacks in every way. Hardcovers are actually nice to look at and easy to keep open while reading. Paperbacks are just the worst option other than being cheap secondhand.
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One does not have to worry someone else will remove their physical book from their possession, unlike digital books.
One does not have to worry someone else will change the wording of their physical book, unlike digital books.
One doesn't have to repeatedly charge their physical book to read it, unlike digital books.
One is free to loan out their physical book to someone else without any restrictions other than it being returned, unlike digital book
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Most of those are not the format, but the provider. You can strip the DRM and get rid of most of that.
I do have to charge my e-ink Kindle...once a month. And that's using it daily.
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I have found there are two classes of books that I read. Those that I want to keep and those that I will read and probably never read again.
Books that I want to keep, like Harry Potter, The Dresden Files, Clarks and Nortons works, I will buy and strip the DRM off. I have complete control over those books. I will read them on anything I want too.
For the second class I found subscribing to Kindle Unlimited to be a good choice. There is a large selection of books that I will read, probably not finishi
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I only read fiction on kindle, for some reason.
Anything I might want to reference or share gets purchased in paper.
Wow. intentional ignorance is a thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
>> once-real books that are hollowed out
I mean it doens't even make them smaller. Lets take some books and make sure I cant accidentally learn something?
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Because it's leftover waste from destroying the pages to create other dumb art.
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Feh (Score:3)
If you're going to use books strictly for decoration you can at least show off a bit by using real yet uncut books. There is literary precedent.
Sweet! (Score:3)
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Still got some shelf space to fill next to my collection of vinyl records I can't play [loudwire.com].
It's interesting that you have the whole downsizing and tiny house groups while at the same time you have another group that is buying useless stuff with no practical value to them.
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Burger King did this (Score:5, Funny)
In the late '80s, a Burger King was built in my town. Upon my first entry, I was delighted to see a shelf full of books, and after getting my meal, sat down near it and tried to grab a book (I think it was "The Brothers Karamazov") only to find that I couldn't, and the whole thing was a dummy - a prop. I was upset, and then worried what else there was false. I then doubted the royalty of the supposed king, and if what I was eating was really beef. On the whole, it was a step down from the mini-golf which had previously been on the site..
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Having the location previously being a mini-golf adds just the right light touch of irony.
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Now is the Burger of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of Pork
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Is this BK still there? If so, then where exactly?
Who reads dead tree editions anyway (Score:2, Interesting)
Ebooks are far more convenient.
Especially for those of us with eyesight problems.
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My Kindle Paperwhite lasts a solid month of an hour or two a day usage. I do read at night with the backlight on the lowest setting, though. If I had electricity problems, I could charge it with the smallest of solar panels once every couple of weeks.
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Re:Who reads dead tree editions anyway (Score:5, Funny)
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I have eyesight problems, but just nearsightedness.
It's quite relaxing to take my glasses off / contacts out and read a book. In a twist of irony, as my eyes age, those "eyesight problems" for me keep me able to read small print comfortably.
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Ebooks are far more convenient.Especially for those of us with eyesight problems.
My situation exactly (and because e-books are so easy to get I do more reading than I ever did on paper), which is why when I want to look pretentious I use a wall of books as my Zoom background.
Fromage to Eternity (Score:5, Funny)
I just want books liek "Fromage to Eternity" "Grated Expectations" "Waiting for Gouda" and so forth.
Wallace absolutely had his priorities right.
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WTH (Score:3)
I have .. (Score:2)
I also have a copy of the CRC Standard Math Tables. I have to confess only making it about halfway through reading the log tables before
realfakebooks.com (Score:2)
art imitating the past at this point (Score:2)
I suppose that in one way it's just art imitating the past, the fact that they are fake likely doesn't even reigster in the heads of the people they are trying to impress. They are probably too young to appreciate having a book collection themselves. To them it's a bit of throwback decor. Amongst my older friends, we can all appreciate a good library. For the younger people I know, it's mostly a curiosity unless they are one of the rare ones enthralled by physical books, or educated in a profession that
Satanic buffoonery. (Score:2)
This kind of person is probably baffled why it would be in bad taste to stuff and mount their dead relatives in the living room.
We downsized... (Score:2)
...and discarded at least 95% of our books. I kept a few hundref in my little man-cubby, because I have always loved having a wall of books to look at. But new books are now ebooks, which is just practical.
If I found a bunch of fake books in someone's house, my opinion of them would plummet. I would understand fake books in someplace like Ikea, where they have fake stuff sitting on furniture to show what it could look when in use. In someone's house? Pathetic...
There's an apt precedent (Score:2)
two sides to real books (Score:2)
best practices (Score:2)
I'm confused (Score:3)
Are fake books purchased by people who never had any books in the first place and want some for decoration, or are they for people who have a library of embarrassing books that they don't want to show off?
Gonna go out on a limb and "not having enough books" is probably not a problem many slashdot readers have.
Obligatory (Score:2)
I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.
The Great Gatsby should be the most prominent book (Score:1)
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I recently read that for the first time.
Bleah. This is the ultimate novel of the Jazz Age? A bunch of well-off to rich people (working people, the 90% of us, don't actually appear), not one of whom I like, nor would I want to spend time with.
"esthetics over function" (Score:2)
For complete and total frauds, who actual don't read (like TFG, who couldn't read the daily security briefings).
Fake books, for fake people.
But Why? (Score:1)
Hollowing out real books.. (Score:2)
Books (Score:1)