Book Curation: A Bibliophile’s Nightmare?
Who knew what a ‘book curator’ was before Goop?
‘Celebrity Bibliophile’
The ways that bookshelves should function within a space became a divisive issue amongst book-lovers in 2019 when Gwyneth Paltrow hired a professional ‘book curator’, the ludicrously-named Thatcher Wine, to fill the shelves of her new LA home. Wine’s role entailed assembling 500–600 new books for Paltrow (whether she’ll actually read them is up for debate), using custom covers to adhere to a heavily curated colour palette.
With the demand for print books still going strong, people are increasingly looking beyond the content and considering the physical space where the book is situated. Can books function as aesthetic pieces in interior design, and should they? Is this something that traditional publishers should be paying attention to?
Indeed, publishers such as Taschen and Phaidon have a legacy of producing books that function as art objects — one edition of Taschen’s Christo and Jean Claude contains an original screen print and is priced at £50,000. Using ‘high-brow’ books as props is certainly something which can be priced for the elite, but curating a library based on aesthetics is also common and far-reaching in online spaces.
#BookShelvesofInstagram
Though Thatcher Wine’s enterprise, Juniper Books, has earned derision from book-lovers in places like The Cut (notably, for the service’s high price point), this trend contains more democratic strands. The enormous #bookstagram community on Instagram has an interior-design-based twin, featuring ‘curated’ shots of bookshelves and showcasing a wealth of trends, from colour-coded spines to books with the pages facing outward in favour of a minimalist look. When Apartment Therapy posted this photo of the backwards trend, it was met with uproar:
‘Perfect if you are The Little Mermaid and think books are just whosits and whatsits to decorate with.’
(Instagram comment, quoted in Apartment Therapy [2017])
Many readers would argue against the book-as-art-object trend because it circumvents the book’s functionality, whether you’re flipping your books to hide the titles or paying $350 for a Pantone-coloured jacket. Either way, it’s something that bibliophiles have been quick to label as performative and anti-intellectual.
‘Site-Specific’ Reading
It would be easy for the publishing industry to relegate ‘book curatorship’ to the realm of fads and gimmicks — arguably, the ‘authentic’ consumers are the ones actually reading the books. But perhaps there is a type of literary curation that goes beyond surface-level decoration, presenting an argument for considering our reading environment and what we require from books as physical objects.
Yoshitaka Haba, curator at BACH book services in Tokyo, takes on projects ranging from company and hospital libraries to zoos. He describes how by watching people interact with the books chosen for a hospital library, ‘we discover things like some books are heavy… or we should go for color because B&W isn’t legible… I want to choose books in a site-specific way, so that they align with a particular place.’ In this sense, perhaps it is worth rethinking the ways in which books can be marketed as site-specific. Haba’s angle on book curatorship emphasises how the space in which we read enhances the reading experience, not the other way round (Deem Journal).
It is undeniable that as technology moves forward, our relationship to reading is changing. The Instagram age and onus on aesthetics, regardless of its reception, has propelled book curatorship into being a strand of a book’s lifecycle and one that publishers may have to consider more in future (in a very similar way to point of sale marketing in bookshops). Perhaps the continuous appeal of physical books is something that should be interrogated and moved with, not against.
Bibliography
Haba, Y (no date), “Yoshitaka Haba”. Interviewed by Deem Journal. Available at: https://www.deemjournal.com/stories/yoshitaka-haba (Accessed 31.01.2021)
Hosken, O (2019), “Gwyneth Paltrow Hired a Personal Book Curator — Here’s What He Chose For Her Shelves”, Town & Country. Available at: https://www.townandcountrymag.com/style/home-decor/a28680227/how-to-organize-books-thatcher-wine-gwyneth-paltrow/ (Accessed 28.01.2021)
Hyde, M (2019), “Meet Thatcher Wine: the ‘celebrity bibliophile’ you didn’t know you needed”, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2019/aug/22/meet-thatcher-wine-the-celebrity-bibliophile-you-didnt-know-you-needed (Accessed 30.01.2021)
Pennell, J (2017), “Would you put books backward? This decor trend has people seriously divided”, Today. Available at: https://www.today.com/home/backward-books-shelves-controversial-home-decor-trend-t119006
Reid, H (2019), “60 Minutes With Thatcher Wine The celebrity book curator selling literary taste by the foot”, The Cut. Available at: https://www.thecut.com/2019/09/thatcher-wine-juniper-books.html (Accessed 30.01.2021)
Shunnarah, M (2019), “Book Curators Were a Thing Before Gwyneth Paltrow”, Off the Beaten Shelf. Available at: https://www.offthebeatenshelf.com/blog/book-curator (Accessed 30.01.2021)
“Taschen vs. Phaidon: Collector’s Edition War” (2011), Flavorwire, Available at: https://www.flavorwire.com/159329/taschen-versus-phaidon-collectors-edition-war (Accessed on 30.01.2021)
Wilson, T (2017), “Everyone Loves to Hate the Backwards Books Trend — Do You?”, Apartment Therapy. Available at: https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/displaying-books-backwards-trend-252595 (Accessed 29.01.2021)
