“Bookishness is about maintaining a nearness to books.” (p. 10) Nearness. There’s something quiet but powerful in the way Pressman uses that phrase. She isn’t talking about how much we read or how deeply we understand a text. She is talking about something simpler. Being close to books, keeping them around us, letting them shape the spaces we live in. And that idea immediately made me think about why books still matter in a world where so much has moved to screens.

For Pressman, this physical closeness becomes a kind of language. The book doesn’t need to be opened to speak, it communicates simply by being there. A shelf full of novels, a stack on a nightstand, even a single book placed on a desk can create a certain atmosphere. It changes how a room feels. It changes how we feel in the room. Nearness becomes emotional. It suggests comfort, stability, or even a small sense of grounding in a digital world that is constantly shifting and moving. But Pressman pushes this idea even further. She reminds us that bookishness isn’t only about what we surround ourselves with, it’s also about who we become through it. “‘Bookishness’ comes from ‘bookish,’ a word used to describe a person who reads a lot (perhaps too much). When coupled with ‘-ness,’ the term takes on a subtle new valence.” (p. 10) Suddenly bookishness is not an action but a state of being. It becomes part of how we present ourselves, how we are read by others and how we imagine our own identity.

And I see this everywhere. Books on shelves in the background of Zoom calls. So-called “shelfies” on social media. Pinterest boards full of libraries people will never visit, saved simply because of the aesthetic. It’s all an attempt to stay close to books, even when the books themselves have become partly digital and partly symbolic. Nearness moves from the physical world into the online one and the objects we keep or the images we share still say something about us. What I find interesting is how natural this feels. We don’t usually think about why a room looks different when it has books in it. We don’t question why a shelf can make a space feel warmer or more personal. But Pressman makes visible something we usually take for granted. Books shape the environments we build and the selves we project. To be “bookish” today doesn’t mean reading all day. It means choosing to stay close to the idea of the book. Its presence, its weight, its quiet promise of time and attention.

In a world where everything is fast and fleeting, nearness becomes its own kind of resistance. It’s a small way of holding on to something steady. And maybe that’s why bookishness feels so relevant now. Not because we are reading more, but because we still want our lives to feel like there’s space for books in them.