The idea of collecting books in a personal library without reading them, just for the thrill of having it, paints books in a new light as objects instead of content to be read. According to Walter Benjamin in his book Illuminations it’s not about the books at all, it is about the thrill of acquiring them and the feeling of owning them. It always comes down to ownership and power. People feel powerful and more intelligent if they have many books in their possession. It’s the feeling of looking around in your gallery knowing that they are all yours even though most of the books sit unread, for example, “to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, ‘And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?’ “Not one tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sévres china everyday?(Benjamin, 62)” This quote places books in the same category as fancy china that sits in a cabinet, only to be used for special occasions, or never at all. This is powerful because it argues that books are merely material objects to be collected. This deeply corresponds with the idea of bookishness and shows books to be material items, separating them from what they hold inside.
I remember the first day of class many classmates spoke of their book collections and how they hadn’t even read most of them, and I related to that. We collect books for the feel, smell, touch, look, and physicality. The thrill of acquiring. The feeling of power from owning them. This is all very human of us, our hunting and gathering nature. I strongly believe humans will never stop collecting books, even in a fully digital age. Books will always be a collectors item, an object, separate from its content. Humans love books as objects, even if we don’t even use them to get our knowledge.