David McKie’s piece in the Guardian today “My obsession with spines” deals with a strain of bibliomania that affects many of us book types. The need to know what is on the shelf behind that person in the picture. He talks about recent images in the Guardian and his desire to identify all the titles lurking on the shelves in the background.
He calls it a “form of voyeurism, a lust to discover guilty secrets.”
Like McKie whenever I visit someone’s home it is the books on the shelf that grab my attention not the furniture, not the kitchen appliances but the books.
It is also very distracting to watch television interviews with books as a backdrop. My attention is alway divided between listening and scanning the shelves. I am hoping that when television gets a bit more interactive my curiosity will be quelled by a simple click.
Shelfari should offer this option for its users:
Instead of only seeing all the titles from your library face out why not an option of a spine shot of the collection for us incurables?
Image of inside of Ophelias Books in Seattle taken by brewbooks