From a piece at the BBC website by Siobhan Toman, and which starts out being about bookshelves:
But why are we so keen to show off our books - necessitating all these shelves...? Books aren't essential - you don't need them to sit on or eat off (unless you are a student). If you want to read, or check a reference, there are libraries.
And all those bonnet busters by the likes of Jane Austen and George Elliot - they can be called up at the touch of a mouse thanks to the numerous websites which reproduce out-of-copyright books. It's not the same as curling up with a paperback - but how often do you really re-read the old classics?
.....
Surely books should be temporary, disposable items?And yet, more than 500 years after the invention of the printing press, the importance and value of keeping books is showing no sign of waning. The internet was supposed to spell the end of the printed word - instead one of its earliest success stories was an online book shop, Amazon.
It's hard to escape the theory that there is an exhibitionist side to our bookcase obsession - it's about showing off how much you have read, or plan to read, or pretend to have read.
After which she's away, with bookshelves as an extension of the self and form of public display. I have one word to say here by way of intitial response: libraries.
Yes, libraries. They put out many of their books on open shelves, and yet it's hard to think that there's a self behind the practice, wanting to show off. No, it's just a handy way of arranging books so that they can be found, or be inspected and chosen from. A person who kept all his or her books in boxes or cupboards, or under the floorboards, would have much less easy access to them and much more trouble laying their hand upon a particular book when it was wanted. And many, if not all, owners of books like this kind of ease of access. They not only read books; they also look back at books they've read, refer to them to remind themselves of something, re-read, look things up and so on. While, therefore, I don't deny that there may also be exhibitionist impulses at work, I'd say that for most people these were secondary to utilitarian concerns. (Thanks: AC.)