Hello! Today, I want to talk about a serious cultural rift I've seen popping up all over the internet. On either side of this great debate, believers passionately state their cause and attempt to prosteletyze anyone who will listen. They draw up diagrams and distribute self-help pamphlets (gifs) in trying to woo others to their side. This debate -- about whether and how to style your bookshelves - rages on, especially in the deep corners of Pinterest and the hallowed halls of design blogs.

Exhibit A. On one side of the debate, we have the Hardcore Stylists. This group regards books as incidental - and indeed, bookshelves without any books whatsoever have been reported - and instead focuses on the well-curated and visually-pleasing display of artifacts, art and tchotchkes. When books are involved, adherents to the Hardcore philosophy have been known to display books by color (cough, ehem, guilty), like so:

But when color is perceived to be the enemy, adherents who value hard work and low contrast have been known to cover entire collections with white paper, thereby eliminating those garish book spines and shout-y titles.

An off-shoot of this small, puritanical sect dispenses with the work of covering up your books, but has been able to achieve the same effect by displaying books backwards.

See! This technique renders the books just as useless and difficult to find as the first, but it is much more efficient in its pursuit of beige.

Though there are many sects, Hardcore-ists all take their craft Very Seriously. There are graphs. Charts. Tutorials galore. Check out this post at Laurl Designs, wherein she uses lessons gleaned in art appreciation class to illustrate good styling. Or this one, at Apartment Therapy. Or here at Design Sponge. They're all good posts, and, depending on what side of the Great Debate you find yourself on, good lessons. They're just also an awful lot of metaphorical ink spilled in the pursuit of shelfy sartorial perfection.

On the other side of the spectrum are those that proudly let their freak flag fly. We'll call them the Just Bookers. These people look with scorn at those who would intermix a faux taxidermy piece or anything that can be described as a "starburst" on their shelves. Just Bookers mock color blockers and coverers and stylers with equal intensity, and they blog about it at places like My Kids Eat Off the Floor (don't they all?) and LifeUnstyled.

There is, of course, a whole branch of conspiracists who claim that some of the Just Bookers are protesting just a tad too much, and who question the angle of that artfully leaning book and note that it may not have landed just so after being tossed aside by a satisfied and well-hand-and-eye coordinated reader. We'll ignore these theorists for the time being and take the two sides at their face value. They can agree on little, but they can all gasp in horror at this.

So, these are disaster. But they're not this way in an intentional design move. I have been purge- purge- purging my way through the apartment, including through the dining room built-ins that now hold our shoes, but which used to hold overflow tchochkes. That's right: I had whole shelves devoted to pretty stuff to rotate in and out. That's all well and good when space isn't a premium, but here, it was flat out ridiculous. I also was holding onto things I didn't need or even particularly want - but more on that later, when I finally delve into the KonMari experience - so when I went about really culling through this stuff, I decided that if it wasn't beautiful or meaningful enough to warrant space out where we could see it, it had to go. "Out where I could see it" meant it had to find space on the shelves, so I stuffed everything I wanted to keep here, and the result is the beautiful hodge-podge you see before you. The basket is stuffed with breastfeeding supplies - really - and there are candles and plants and small objects and yes, lots and lots of books to fanangle here. So, here's my plan. I'm going to paint the backs of the shelves, and possibly the shelves themselves, white. Then I'm going to get them out of here. I am going to trade these, and the dresser-cum-credenza, with the shelves in our family room. Chiefly, the family room shelves will take up less room on the wall than this setup, which will open up more room as a passthrough from the entry. But also, I think it will look really nice, and provide some good space for books and dining room pretties. It's going to be a crapload of work, but I *think* it will all be worth it. Soooo, wish me luck? Convincing Bret? And then doing it all?

Which side of the great bookshelf debate are you on? Books only? Books + decor? Decor only? Do tell. I won't judge you, unless you turn your books backwards without a decent plan for identifying them. It's hard to find common ground on such a fraught topic, but I think we can all agree to never, ever, use the hashtag #shelfie. Thanks y'all! Talk soon.