FOR most readers a good book deserves its place on the bookshelf, snuggly nestled against other well-thumbed tomes and proudly displayed for all visitors to see.
But now a new craze sweeping the world of interior design is dividing bibliophiles and decorators by flipping the time-honoured way of storing a book on it's head. Or rather, on its back.
A trend for stacking and shelving books with their spine to the wall and pages facing out the way has been growing among style-conscious homeowners since the end of last year after the idea first appeared on a handful of interior design websites.
The idea is that instead of a multi-coloured bookshelf disrupting a room's carefully thought out colour scheme, visitors are greeted with a solid wall of pages, usually a uniform beige colour.
Some have been delighted by the novel switch, but passions have been roused among others over the idea that you can no longer judge a book by its cover.
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Lifestyle writer Lauren Coleman found herself entrapped in a war of words online after posting one innocuous picture on her blog of a shelf of backwards-facing books.
The 35-year-old told The Times: "People started being extremely abusive. Someone called me a dumb slut and then people started threatening to come round to my house to kick my head in.
"Some people may think it is pretentious but to make assumptions about my character based on one bookcase is unfair.
"I know books are very emotive and do carry a huge amount of meaning for people but it is going a bit far to threaten to beat me up about it."
Ms Coleman, from Northamptonshire, said that she decided to stop reading comments on her blog because of the furore, and that she spotted the idea on Pinterest.
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Another writer who faced a backlash after joining the trend was Tess Wilson of the Apartment Therapy blog.
She wrote: “Our post garnered over 14,000 likes, it also received 49 how do you find your books? 38 thumbs-down emojis, 7 is this a joke? inquiries, 5 unfollows, 2 delete your accounts [comments], and 1 demand for a retraction (that one really made me laugh)."
However, despite its popularity online, professionals in Scotland are sceptical the fad will catch on.
Sally Homan, Director at Edinburgh-based interior design studio Robertson Lindsay, did not think much of the idea.
She said: “It’s not something we would advise. We have had commercial clients where books were chosen to be the right colour scheme for the room, but have never put them the wrong way around.
“Books are meant to be read and loved, and I’m a book-lover myself, so I think it’s a shame not to actually be able to see what the books on the shelf are.”
She added that social media could provide inspiration for interior designers, even if the backward books plan was not one of the better ideas to surface online.
Ms Homan said: “Social media is great if you want to show a client an example of something, you can often find an image that is better than a sketch.
“People share a lot of their ideas online and it is great that they are being more creative and showing that to an audience.”
Pictures used with kind permission from The Kissing Booth Blog
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