Analysing Spaces – what does your bookshelf say about you?!

Think that nonverbal signaling via design is silly?  Read Tim Dowling’s 2024 article in The Guardian, “Shelf-Absorbed: Eight Ways to Arrange Your Bookshelves – And What They Say About You” (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/shelf-absorbed-nine-ways-to-arrange-your-bookshelves-and-what-they-say-about-you).

Dowling’s work does not seem science-based, but it does shed light on something all of us are doing all the time, trying to figure out who other people really are, in part based on what spaces they have some control over look, etc., like. We do this at home, at work, and anywhere else we find ourselves, and the impressions we form are important, powerful, and sustained, as we discussed in this article.

Read Dowling’s fun article to learn if the way your books are arranged/placed says “casual intellectual abundance: my books, they just get everywhere!” or “It just looks as if you’ve tried to purchase cultural credibility by the metre” or “implies that you have a pretty full dance card when it comes to reading. Add in the occasional uncorrected proof to suggest you get sent a lot of books for free because your opinion has currency” or something else entirely.