Welcome to Lookshelves.
Lookshelves is a place to look at bookshelves online.
When I tell people about this project, they often point out that there are already lots of places to look at books online. I tell them, "This is true, but there are no places to look at bookshelves."
When I go to someone's house, I am immediately drawn to their bookshelves. I want to know what they read (or buy), how they display their books, what's well-thumbed and what's in the darkish corners. I want to stumble into their secret interest in banjo, or ouija boards, or the Ottoman Empire. I love seeing that we've read the same thing, or being reminded that I meant to read that book, or seeing a bunch of books by an author I've never heard of right next to a writer I know and love. For all of these reasons, I love bookshelves.
Perhaps more importantly, I love books. Actual books, with pages and marginalia and musty smells. Books with creaky spines, folded corners, water stains wobbling the pages. Books with old library card pockets glued into the front covers.
The world is so wired these days that it's easy to forget about the physical experience of books. You may feel as though you're browsing bookshelves when you spend hour on GoodReads or scan your friends' Amazon book reviews. But the construction of our online literary identities is more conscious, more created, than the shelves in our homes. It's more formal, less intimate, and in certain ways, less interesting. I created Lookshelves because I realized that there was no online space where I could actually see books in their 'natural habitat'... on shelves, in homes. And I kind of thought there should be.
Lookshelves isn't exactly the same as thumbing through a friend's books or peering at a stranger's shelf (and it's certainly harder to borrow books this way). But it is probably as close as you're going to get online.
I hope you enjoy it.
~Meghan Beresford