[VLM]

I believe amazon added twitter integration to ebook ordering four years ago, so from a social signalling perspective, going virtual doesn't mean going in cold.

There are interior decorators who know about our observational biases and will specify books on shelves to match a "look" although the client will probably never crack the book open. Once I learned that, the utility of analyzing bookshelves dropped a bit.

Have to actually read to be interesting, merely owning an unread book isn't very interesting. This impacts the public library user pretty intensely, because they can read a lot without having the interior decorating to prove it.

[claudius]

I’m not part of the age group yet where people would be able to afford books only to look good to their peers. And while you are certainly right that public libraries might make it possible to read many books without owning any, I found that most people who like books use them to read more books, but still get the usual 5-10 books per birthday/christmas/you-name-it to fill their bookshelves.

Of course it is a heuristic and there are both false negatives and positives, so YMMV.

[VLM]

"I’m not part of the age group yet where people would be able to afford books only to look good to their peers."

Agreed that probably pretty expensive if you're trying to pose as a foodie complete with "Modernist Cuisine" and all that.

On the other hand, "Vintage classic worn leather covers, organized on the shelf by color" that stuff is shoveled out by the pound. The expensive part is hiring the interior decorator, not buying the shoveled books.

Bringing it home to HN I suspect for many here, there are some copies of Knuth, and the little scheme series, and numerous others, on some peoples bookshelves that look nice but have avoided reading...

[nekopa]

Ha! I swear to god, I will read those Knuths one day even if it kills me. I have travelled a good portion of this planet, and the one thing that has always travelled with me is my 3 volume set of TAOCP. They've frozen in a tent with me in Alaska, been homeless with me in Hawaii, seen the rocky mountains and are currently chilling with me in central Europe.

I have to say one of the main reasons for this is that they are beautiful books. The design and printing of them are awesome, I even used them as inspiration for designing my friends first novel (self published) which took me six months of researching typesetting and fonts and hacking away on InDesign. I don't think I could ever bring myself to throwing/giving them away.

But I've never really had the chance to use them for posturing, non of my meatspace friends are remotely involved in IT, so have no idea about the books. But many a person has been impressed by the aesthetic quality of them, believe it or not...

[triplepoint217]

I don't buy books to look good for my peers. I buy books because I like reading them, lending them, etc. The social signalling is just a side benefit.