not just about the bookcase

I've written previously about bookcases, particularly design. Writing for BBC News, Siobhan Toman suggests that the real beauty of the bookcase lies in the contents.

[I]t is designed to be fit for purpose - supporting and displaying books. It's not about the finesse of the furniture - it's a means to an end. A bookcase is like a picture frame - the real design is about what you put on it.

'The first thing I see when I wake up' - Peter Sandico's bookcases

But why are we so keen to show off our books - necessitating all these shelves and swelling the already bursting coffers of Swedish furnishers? Books aren't essential - you don't need them to sit on or eat off (unless you are a student). If you want to read, or check a reference, there are libraries.

And all those bonnet busters by the likes of Jane Austen and George Elliot - they can be called up at the touch of a mouse thanks to the numerous websites which reproduce out-of-copyright books. It's not the same as curling up with a paperback - but how often do you really re-read the old classics?

When Penguin issued its first paperbacks in the 1930s, they were designed as an impulse purchase - for the same price of a packet of cigarettes. And no one keeps them after they are spent.

Books were immensely prestigious. Not only did they show how very learned you were but they were also very expensive Leslie Geddes-Brown Interior design writer Trashy book amnesty

Surely books should be temporary, disposable items?

And yet, more than 500 years after the invention of the printing press, the importance and value of keeping books is showing no sign of waning. The internet was supposed to spell the end of the printed word - instead one of its earliest success stories was an online book shop, Amazon.

It's hard to escape the theory that there is an exhibitionist side to our bookcase obsession - it's about showing off how much you have read, or plan to read, or pretend to have read. You are subtly suggesting that you are the sort of person who keeps Finnegans Wake handy, for example, just in case you ever fancy dipping in for a quick, albeit incomprehensible, catch-up.

HOW TO ORGANISE A BOOKCASE? Problem with alphabetical is forgetting the author or title Organise by subject, like gardening, cooking, novels Tall books at the bottom Paperbacks nearer top Books you never read out of reach Source: Leslie Geddes-Brown

Ever since manuscripts were first bound, books have had a hallowed air.

"Books were immensely prestigious," says Ms Geddes-Brown. "Not only did they show how very learned you were - you could read - but they were also very expensive. At one throw, you proved your intellectual and monetary value."

Peter Sandico is a firm believer in books as an extension of the self. A book blogger, who is collecting photos of readers' shelves in his "bookcase project", he says the magic of book display is the ease with which they can be manipulated to present a certain front.

"The books we choose to display in our bookcases say a lot as to how we want others to see us," says Mr Sandico. "People who want to appear to have serious or academic reading tastes display their classics, while keeping popular novels at the back of the bookcases."

The minimalist approach - bookcase, but no books

If you are more relaxed about the presentation of your shelves, they can give an insight into an owner's character, he says.

"Books somehow reflect an aspect of our personality that people don't easily see. I have a friend who has a reputation for being an ice queen, but when I went to her place, I noticed all these cheesy romantic novels in her bookcases."

There's also a magpie aspect to our bookcase love. Books, like anything that can be bought in quantity, appeal to our collecting, acquisitive, instinct. Classic novels are always being re-issued with new cover designs and in different boxed sets. Historical reference sets can be beautiful, leather bound and often extremely expensive.

Faking it

They are meant to be looked at and admired, says Mr Sandico.

"Being a bibliophile myself, I like to take a peek at what other bibliophiles have in their shelves. It's the same thing as any collection - if you're into shoes, you'd get giddy looking at other people's shoe collection. With a book collection, there's always something surprising to see. You never know what's tucked in the shelves."

Is bookcase wallpaper better than the real thing?

When bookshelves aren't giving away our deepest secrets or providing browsing or boasting opportunities, they can be decor essentials in their own right, says Ms Geddes-Brown. In fact, bookcases occasionally have nothing at all to do with reading.

"People definitely buy books to fill up bookcases; sometimes they cover up the bindings to get an overall, supposedly elegant, effect. And interior designers sometimes order books by the metre to fill up a library, if there is one in the house."

But don't despair if you don't have your own interior designer styling your shelves. If you long for the library look but don't have the necessary number of novels, there are companies who make fake books to fill the gaps (in your shelves if not your knowledge).

There are even ranges of "bookcase" wallpaper, which recreate the well-stocked effect for a fraction of the effort. Although, as Ms Geddes-Brown points out, "the repetition of the same books does give the game away".

For many of us, of course, the problem can be more about being book-rich, shelf-poor.

When this occurs and the charity shop rejects a box of your well-thumbed tomes, it might be comforting to know that you can get a "height extender" for the ubiquitous Billy.

I recently resorted to it - but then I keep two copies of Finnegans Wake, just in case visitors miss the first one.

I need a couple of new bookcases. Two solid ones are stacked to overflowing. I hide them too now, as visitors used to ask to borrow my books all the time and it would be years before they were returned and sometimes in poorer condition.