Goop and good books: How shopping for other people’s books became a real profession

“Some people are real. Some people are good. Some people are fake. Some people are real good at being fake.”

— Drake

Humans, I’ve concluded, are bizarre.

I’m all about the theory of least effort. I’m also all about outsourcing things I don’t want to do, or can’t do, or am bad at, like outsourcing bike lessons for my kid, which created a lot of judgment, or hiring tutors. (Because once letters get involved in math, I am out!) 

And admittedly, and maybe embarrassingly, I even outsourced packing my suitcases to a housekeeper — for $30 USD — after spending a month in Mexico before coming home. (No judgment. I’m a terrible driver and an even worse packer!) 

Now, if you think outsourcing packing suitcases is odd or embarrassing or even the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard, then how do you feel about people who outsource what books should be out on their bookcases or coffee tables to their interior decorators?

Books aren’t just for reading anymore.

Just ask any interior designer who has been asked to “decorate” bookshelves, like I did in part two!  Apparently, you can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, and while you can’t pick your friend’s nose, you can hire someone to pick your books.

Choosing books for clients is a best-kept secret among interior designers. A secret their clients would never want getting out.

As weird as it may sound, there IS a possibility that non-readers (or are they fake readers?) actually might help keep publishing alive spend more money than the average reader buying physical books — books they have never have read and do not plan on reading (because, well, they do not read), thus helping physical books move off the endangered species list.

My intrigue around this topic occurred a while ago, when a friend invited me to see their new house, which was more like a small museum.

Not only did they make me take off my shoes — understandable but horrifying because I was wearing mismatched kids socks — but I wasn’t allowed to touch the hundreds of books on her floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

“I didn't know you were such an avid reader! How did I not know this?” I asked in utter disbelief, just as I do when people tell me they don’t like reading.

“Don't touch,” my friend answered in a tone that suggested I was about to touch the Mona Lisa. “My designer spent eight hours choosing and organizing them. She even brought people to measure and make sure each book was aligned in a certain way.” 

“So, you didn’t read any of these?” I asked, prompting my friend to respond, “You can’t tell anyone but…” (Don’t we all love sentences that start this way?) And then she admitted she hasn’t read 99% of them. 

“They’re part of the decor,” she said. “Do you love?”

Admittedly, yes. I did love! And also…oh, did I want to touch those books, but I felt like I was in a shop, where “you break it, you buy it!” Or like when the waiter says, “Be careful, the plate is hot,” and you touch it anyway?

But it did lead me to wonder how many fake readers people are out there who buy books solely for their aesthetic appeal.

That wasn’t the only time I’ve heard about people giving free will to their decorators, outsourcing book buying for their home libraries or bookshelves.

We may never know what came first — the chicken or the egg — but now we do know that, for some people, colour palettes come before published books and lightning fixtures before literature. 

Books, for some, are no longer for reading, or even killing insects, or to throw when you’re mad, or to use as a door stopper. Or for learning. This may seem insane, but it doesn't make it less true.

Apparently, my bright pink book jackets didn’t quite fit in with the nude colour scheme. None of my books made the cut for her carefully designed arrangement of curated outsourced books. (Now, that’s embarrassing! A designer banning my book, purely based on the colour of its spine? Oh, the outrage!)

Recently, I also sold my house. My biggest worry was that people would look at my bookshelves.

I was right to worry.

According to one home stager, “Books are indicators of the Good Life. They represent education, money, intelligence, good company, entertainment, success, and taste.”

Homebuyers know they're not buying your possessions, but in their hearts they hope your success, good taste and other enviable qualities will transfer over when they take possession.

(Front and centre in one of my bookshelves in the kitchen is a neon yellow copy of Spanish for Dummies. Didn’t matter. A builder is planning to knock down my house anyway, so obviously he wasn’t enviable of my “good life.” In preparation for the visits, this was my mantra: “As far as everyone who comes in here knows, we are a nice, normal family.”)

Having some well-chosen and arranged books chosen by someone else in every room of the house is actually not that insane these days.

Book lovers and avid readers may believe you can’t buy happiness, but you can buy books (and that’s sort of the same thing).

Hiring a “book curator” is a thing now. (I’ll add that to my wishlist after personal driver, chef, massager, and glam squad.)

Who am I kidding? I’m not Gwyneth Paltrow, famous for her bizarre lifestyle brand, Goop. I subscribe to Goop, and her products are good for a laugh. I mean, a “vampire repellent spray” to protect your aura? A steamer for your lady parts? Her infamous yoni egg that you insert into your intimate area to strengthen your feminine energies? 

And one of my favourites, her “toothpaste squeezer.” Apparently, if you're Gwyneth, or aspire to be Gwyneth, you even outsource squeezing your own toothpaste to a device. (Suddenly, outsourcing someone to pack suitcases doesn’t seem that odd, does it?)

So, does it come as a shock that Gwyneth hired a “book curator” to help choose books for her Los Angeles home when she renovated a few years ago?

It would be unfathomable to many book lovers as to why anyone would want to delegate building their personal library, or what goes on their coffee tables, to someone else.

Then again, if Gwyneth can also encourage people to beautify their homes with books, well, then that could lead to others wanting to improve and expand there own book collections.

In an interview with Town and Country, Thatcher Wine, Paltrow’s book curator — yes, again it’s a real job! Where can I apply? — spilled the wine tea on what exactly Paltrow required and how he went about it.

Paltrow, apparently, was in need of a few hundred books. Wine looked at her existing personal taste before investing in the “additional space-fillers.”

Yes, book lovers. Some people see books as “additional space fillers.” (I guess she found another place for her jellyfish tank!)

“Gwyneth remodelled her L.A. home a few years ago, and when she moved in she realized she needed about five or six hundred more books to complete the shelves,” Wine said. Taking into account all areas of Paltrow’s interests, including those of her children, Wine then started his search.

“I looked at books she already owned, which focused on fashion, art, culture, photography, and architecture, as well as books that her kids liked. We expanded on those topics, and for the kids, we included a selection of classics that we thought they might like as they got older,” he said.

In her family room, he said he integrated the books into her existing collection so that it felt “very light, inviting and easy to grab off the shelves.”

“In the dining room, we stuck to a more rigid colour palette of black, white, and grey since it was less of a space where one might hang out and read,”  Wine also shared.

This does pose an interesting question: How much of a library or book collection should be a personal choice, and how much should be outsourced chosen to compliment your design style? Let me know your thoughts on this here!

Wine said that “home libraries, especially those that contain a few dozen, hundred, or even thousands of books, are not about constant use of reading. They are a reflection of where you’ve been and where you want to go.”

Hey, if you’re accustomed to outsourcing professional services like dog walking, personal chefs, private planes, should there be shame in asking for professional help when it comes to the visual appeal of your bookshelves or coffee tables?

Interestingly, Wine has been doing this for 20 years for the rich and famous. A long-time bibliophile and collector, he tapped into this concept sourcing rare, out-of-print books to build home libraries based on interest, author, and colour for his clients.

He has curated the bookshelves of New York’s NoMad hotel, as well as aiding Laura Dern and Shonda Rhimes with their “additional space fillers” book choices for their homes.

But it’s not just celebrities outsourcing books for their homes. Hiring someone to choose your books for your home has become more popular during the age of Zoom. Sure, no one can see you’re still in your pyjama bottoms. BUT they may see a torn edition of Twilight behind you. And that’s just wrong on so many levels.

Brattle Book Shop in Boston bookstore owner Ken Gloss and his staff began offering to curate people’s shelves with hand-picked selections of books to have on display during video meetings, when the pandemic hit. (Wait? You don’t scrutinize people’s backdrops?)

To Gloss, having some aesthetically pleasing spines perfectly arranged at eye level or even a few well-known titles neatly stacked up “offers a lot of prestige.” (Even if it is for show.)

“When you look at someone’s books, you can tell a lot about them,” he said. “Put back there the impression that you want to give.”

Nicole Reiss, manager of the bookstore, said the idea to curate people’s background with books was born out of a bit of snark. “We were watching a news program and were like, ‘This person still has their college textbooks in the background, and they’re supposed to be an authority on a serious subject,’” she said. “We were joking. Well, maybe since we’re professionals and this is what we do all the time, we could suggest that we could curate your backgrounds for your meetings.” 

She joked about this in a tweet. It didn’t take people very long to start calling up: “Look, we’d like to get books that maybe we’d like to read anyways, but we’d also like to give that good impression," Gloss said.

Even non-readers, it seems, are smart enough to realize that books, even used as staging accessories, let’s you convey a sense of who lives in the home — meaning interesting, educated people (who are smart enough to outsource to make them look interesting and educated. I’m not sure if I’m super impressed or super horrified! You?)

Here’s how it works: A customer interested in sprucing up their home or office reaches out to the bookshop with a general idea of what they want to pull off. The staff then compiles stacks of literature that may be a good fit. They then style the books on a display shelf in the store and send pictures to the potential client. If they approve, the store ships the books off or holds them for pickup.

“It’s mostly been either professionals or young professionals,” Gloss says. “More corporate, like a lawyer, a doctor . . . people who have regular meetings, and now those meetings are virtual, ”although a handful asked for books to place in the background to boost their appeal during potential online job interviews.”

Ask any interior decorator or designer who has been asked by their clients to choose their books, and they will all agree that their clients like to own books they’ll never read, in part because having them is aspirational. 

Want a coffee table book on Italy that you’ll never crack open? Why not? You want to be the kind of person who buys a dream home there someday, right?

Wine wants to reinvent our perception of books, namely that they are not just sources of information.

“There has been some intellectual snobbery; the idea that books are just meant to be read, but the reality is you can't read all your books at one time, and if you’re a book lover, you may have dozens or hundreds of books,” says Wine. “You keep them because you plan to read them later, or to remind yourselves of what you’ve read, or to project a representation of who you are to others.”

So, cheers to all of you who still read books! 

And a piece of advice for those outsourcing choosing books for their: Before you fake your lifestyle on a Zoom meeting, at least make sure the people on the call don’t know you in real life!

Until next time,

Flip your hair and flip the page (if you’re allowed to)! And check out this Q&A in part two with an interior designer, who’s been asked to buy books for her clients’ entire bookshelves! (Shhh, don’t tell…)

xo

Rebecca