We all love new books, not only to read them, but to display them with pride. But what happens to our old, damages books? They probably get relegated to a closet, or a box under our beds. Now, you can bring those in good conditions back and place them in your bookshelves. If their spines show the tear and wear, you can now hide it. To quote Nina George in The Little Paris Bookshop: “We all grow old, even books. But are you, is anyone, worth less, or less important, because they’ve been around for longer?” This option of shelving books can make home libraries populated with damaged paperbacks look better on the shelf. That way you can say what American architect Jaquelin T. Robertson once wrote: “I continue to be interested in new things that seem old and old things that seem new.”

We all know the inevitable attraction we feel for those mysterious characters in our fiction. In his Oracles, the 17th century Spanish writer and Jesuit priest Baltasar Gracian advises readers who want power to “keep matters in suspense” because “mystery causes veneration.” 

“Keeping matters in suspense” can give you some power.  Well, now is your chance to be mysterious too. By keeping your books permanently facing backward means that every time you have visitors, they will go crazy trying to figure you out. So, keep your guests guessing. 

Even Albert Einstein thought it is great to be mysterious:  “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." And we are not dumb enough to contradict one of the smartest persons in history, therefore, mysterious it is. 

You can tell a lot about the person by looking at their books. How serious they are, or what themes and genres they favor. You can also learn if they are fangeeks of specific series or authors. And it will be obvious if they prefer hardcovers to paperbacks. Harvard professor Leah Price summarizes it perfectly by writing:  “To expose a bookshelf is to compose a self.”  Bookshelves are definitively an expression of self. James Woods, staff writer at The New Yorker, Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University, and author of How Fiction Works has an interesting way of referring to bookshelves. He calls them "the adult show shelves". Meanwhile, Jonathan Lethem, author of the bestseller The Fortress of Solitude, prefers a more romantic approach and calls them "the object of childhood longing".  Even if you call them Show-shelves or Objects of Childhood Longing, bookshelves are a reflection of your self.