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Comment by varjag | Hacker News Reader

In USSR there was this philistine fashion of buying deficit books just to put them on your shelf and to look cultured to your guests.

Now I know they were Tsundoku practitioners.

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I once worked for an extremely wealthy guy for a bit. He built a brand new office building and during setup I was in his very expensive looking back office... and I realized the nice and old looking books weren't even books... they were finely done hollow blocks of book looking replicas with real curved leather spines and everything...

I will never forget how that summed up the man to me. I quit not long after.

My grandma bought the last apartment of a new block, and to her surprise it came fully furnished -- with all the crap the interior designer had chosen. It had been the one on show.

The second bedroom was themed blue and black. I got about 30 new sci fi books, which had been chosen only for the colour of the spine.

At least they were real books though!

Soviet book collecting was often form of conspicuous consumption - it demonstrated owner's ability to acquire goods - so book value was objective, established by society; while tsundoku seems to be driven by subjective value, placed by owner - making it closer to mild hoarding.

Not sure what the USSR has to do with anything here. People do this in America all the time, especially in the business world. It's fashionable to look like one reads books, yet people don't want to spend the time to properly do just that.

https://www.booksbythefoot.com/shop/pc/Books-by-Color-c3.htm

Parodied rather brilliantly by Myles na cCopaleen/Flann O'Brien in 1941.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/cruiskeen-lawn-november-10th...

Well I grew up in USSR. And it was super common.

You should have a look at The Best of Myles by Flann O'Brien, and the stretch of items about his "readers", who will make one's newly purchased books look properly read.

Anyway, have a look at https://www.strandbooks.com/books-by-the-foot .

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