Photo By Gaelle Marcel
Could it be that books have become more for style than for reading? Social media has changed the way we think and the way we grasp for acceptance. Being “artistic” seems to be a hipster thing to people our age, so maybe that is why we see more Instagram posts of coffee and an opened book.
With this being said, I have come to make my Instagram posts with a caption from a book or make a line in my Twitter bio. Lately, I have seen so many people using the same quotes. Do not get me wrong, I love my feed full of quotes from works such as Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick, or Huckleberry Finn. However, I cannot help but question if some know the context or the plot of the book, because I know I sure do not know either when I post! Does everyone just Google “book quotes” now? It got me wondering if reading and literature has become sort of a fashion statement.
To further my point, I know many households and shops use books as decorations. I know book lovers do this all time, myself included, but why? Why do people who do not even like reading do this? It is interesting to see how even as book lovers, we will buy special editions of books to display and never plan on opening them. They are merely to fill a room.
I conducted a small random survey of 30 college students from varying majors and sexes, and found that only nine of them have visited the library this school year. One of those students noted in his/her survey that he/she only went to get Starbucks. However, when I asked how many of them have been to a bookstore this year for a non-textbook, 14 of them had. Furthering those questions, I asked how many of them had read the entire book they bought, and only two responded that they had.
It seems to me that we are all to blame for creating books as something to look at.
I do not know about you, but now I just want to go cozy up with hot chocolate and dive into the closest novel I can find!