Sexy spines or literary red flags?

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Amory Seaberton, can you read? Um, yeah, last I checked. I can still read, although I read before bed, which means I make it two paragraphs and then That's what happens to me. We never get anything read around here. Except for um emails from listeners, which we got one recently from a guy named Seamus in C Mm-hmm. Who told us about a subreddit?

Caught our attention. Seamus says, Hi team, which I really like. He's on the team. We're on the team. Everybody's on the team. I love it. Yeah. I would love to hear you dig into the subreddit Bookshelves Detective. Mmm. He says, I love looking at my friends' books when I go to their houses for dinner, seeing what we have in common, and the selections that reflect something about their personality.

An episode on this subreddit is an opportunity to talk about the assumptions we make about one another and their accuracy or lack thereof. All right. So we wanted to look into this, but given our lack of ability to finish books by our bedsides, apparently We asked someone else on our team who is a huge reader to take the lead. Producer Kolyani Sexena, please stop lurking in the shelves and get into this conversation.

Hi, I'm happy to be here. I'm sorry I'm late. I had to book it to the mic. Dun dun. Oh boy. You spent some time paging through Bookshelves Detectives this subreddit. Um so what can you tell us about what this is and how it works? You post a picture of your bookshelves and no identifying details. Nothing else. Just the picture and your books. And based on that, people try to guess things about you and your life.

I I have to say, Kolyani, this sounds a lot like Fridge Detectives, that subreddit, um, which, you know, is also popular. If you don't know what fridge detectives is, uh, it's people posting pictures of their fridges and Redditors try to guess things about the the the fridge owner's life. Kolyani, how popular is the book version of this?

It seems pretty popular. I mean, I don't have a huge uh frame of reference because I did have to make a Reddit account for this episode. Um but based on what I'm gonna get in. I know. I do have to be able to get it. Your book reading is about to nosedive. I well I I'll just log Reddit my Reddit post on Goodreads. Um but it's a pretty popular subreddit. Uh I looked at it today and it said about fifty-four thousand weekly visitors and about two point nine thousand weekly visitors.

And those numbers seem to fluctuate. Like a couple of weeks ago it was lower than that, but I mean it's in the thousands. And to me, it makes a lot of sense because I'm I'm sort of a maniac about the way that I organize and curate my shelves. Uh I spent a lot of time thinking about it, stroking the like the spines of the books on my shelf. And I'm sure that, you know, other people are free. Wow. Stroking the spines. This is. I can tell you're a romance reader, Kalyan. Wow.

Wow. Okay. So new to the subreddit yourself, new to Reddit it sounds like, but new to the subreddit, have you posted your own bookshelf on there yet? I did. I was so excited. I set up my Reddit account. I took some glamour shots of my shelves. Uh you can take a look at that post if you would like. Oh, to make assumptions about me and my life and um I got Oh I saw this post. Oh you did? You're probably like that loser. No one commented on her post.

Um, I only got two comments and uh one person deleted their comment. So Oh wow. The color scheme is like black and magenta, which again to me screams you're a romance reader, which is great. What would I I mean that if you were if you were guessing, if you were a detective on this subreddit, you would be correct. Um I actually the two shelves that I've posted, one is like a curated shelf of like my fantasy favorite.

And then the other one is like everything that doesn't fit in that other shelf is stacked on there. But yeah, I have a lot of romance. I have a lot of fantasy. So a lot of colorful, colorful spines. You got one comment on your post. This one says a hopeless romantic with a penchant for the fantastic. Does that feel accurate? I think it does. I mean, I definitely am a hopeless romantic in the sense that I love love stories. I love consuming romance. I love talking about romance.

I don't know that I'm that like fantastical. I don't know if I've got that dog in me, and by that dog I mean whimsy. I just I I had a big imagination when I was a kid. And now I think I'm a little more cynical. But I do read a lot of fantasy because I think it's a interesting mirror to our world, um, even though it is fantastic. I have heard some avid readers say you're not supposed to have anything but books on your bookshelf. Whereas you have

Uh, I don't remember who. Maybe we're not friends anymore. This maybe this is what drove us apart. It's a red flag. But like the fact that you have a little Bluetooth speaker and a little stuffed animal and some cameras. That to me is and a candle. That's more similar to my bookshelf where like there are books, but there's also a lot of it's where the knickknacks go to kind of Exact you know little little pops of of personality.

Among the books that that also contribute to the the whole person in bookshelf form. That's so interesting because for me my bookshelves are a place to like Curate vibes. I mean you can't see it, but at the very top of the bookshelf, there's like a big vintage typewriter that one of my colleagues gave me. And um I've got like little frame prints of Boston. Like it's to me, it's all about like

Making a space that looks like me, feels like me. And then also when people come to visit me, I can torture them by giving them a tour of every single thing on my shelf. It's a great personal hobby.

So what are some of the other common themes in the subreddit itself? What kinds of posts are you seeing and how accurate are people's Well I guess we don't know how accurate they are. We can get to the accuracy in a bit,'cause I think there's also just like

so many interesting commonalities that pop up if you spend enough time on the subreddit. I mean, I I looked through as many bookshelves as I could. And one of the things you see, like if people have fantasy on their shelves, generally it tends to be like a lot of I mean, for lack of a better word, like classic older white man fantasy, a lot of George R. R. Martin, Dune is on the shelves. What you are the target demographic Ben. Poppy Cop.

There's a lot of Lord of the Rings. So many Lord of the Rings. I've actually never read Lord of the Rings. Um, and one thing that's really interesting is that there is. Like you don't if you see someone who has a lot of fiction on their shelves, people will take it upon themselves to say, like, oh, you should read nonfiction. I mean, I saw one write a post where Yeah, it there's a lot of like morality or not morality judgments, but more just like

It's like looking at one of these Reddit posts where someone had a lot of Dune, a lot of George R. R. Martin, somebody wrote, You're someone who's afraid of individualism. Whoa, dude. Someone who's afraid of individualism and reads what's popular. If this is your entire collection, you should branch out beyond this. It's okay to read something that hundreds of thousands of other people are not reading.

Yeah, that that's that feels judgy to me, but I also but I what I like is the I like the idea of Redditors like encouraging each other to expand each other's horizons. And like seeing the empty spaces in the bookshelf. It you know, f from other posters and being like, you know what? It looks like you're reading a lot of X. You might try branching out in this way. I like that. Totally. I mean I think it you you really There's a whole universe of types of comments.

Folks saying, like, yeah, you should broad broaden your reading taste, right? Like someone's reading a lot of fiction. They're like, oh, well, you only read what's popular, but then you see someone who's reading a lot of nonfiction. Everyone in the comments is like, Oh, well, you're being really performative. That's not nobody reads like that. So there is a little bit of a

Like a whoa. Um yeah, there's like a jet, it's kind of like a lose lose or like a assumption that if you're reading too much of one kind of thing, you must be one type of person. But then sometimes the guesses get like really crazy and Are surprisingly accurate. Let me pull up one of these posts that I thought was so funny. Someone posted their wife's bookshelves and said, What do my wife's bookshelves say about her?

And one of the comments said she loses her car keys a lot and likes going to the zoo. And the person responded, strangely, yes. This is accurate. Wow. Likes go. I'm here for that. What's what gave away the zoo part? Well somebody asked, somebody asked, how did you figure the first part? And another person replied, not the person who made the original correct guess and said, ADHD with little sparkle emotion.

So there's like a certain playfulness, I think, that people have. And you're trying to guess like what kind of vibe people have. And sometimes that leads to like random random guesses, like you like going to the zoo. And she does. On the one hand, it's kinda sweet that this person posted their wife's bookshelf and you know, they can share any positive comments that that they got and not share any negative ones, but on the other

That feels personal to share. To share like I don't think I would post my own bookshelf. So I don't know. I don't want my husband posting my bookshelf. It's actually more common than you would think. Uh people post pictures of other people's bookshelves all the time on this subreddit, including the bookshelves of the people that they're dating. Oh man, I can't wait to hear more about that. I'll tell you all about it in a minute.

Ben, do you remember our episode on consensual doxing? Of course. So what was one of the key takeaways for you from that episode? That there is way more information about ourselves online than we might realize. Oh yes there is. And that that information in the wrong hands can be used for all sorts of shady stuff. Doxing, of course, but also scams, identity theft. Collecting our data, selling it. Yeah, don't like it. The good news is you can do something about this.

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Okay, Kalliani, we're in the shelves. We're amongst the shelves together. And um you were telling us about people posting Their dates, shelves on the subreddit? Yes. And these are some of the most popular posts that I saw on the subreddit. I mean, for example, there was one post, uh, the title is Started Seeing This Guy. What does it say about him? Um, this post has 825 comments. People just love going in on these bookshelves.

And um on this particular person's bookshelf, you can see a book called Unlocking the Bible and then um Watchmen. So there's like a real variety of vibes. Ooh, you can really zoom in and you really can. You can. You can lock in. And people love posting their potential partners' bookshelves on the subreddit and people love weighing. There's certain things that pop up again and again. If you're a woman and you're posting a shelf about a guy that you're seeing and he's got like a bunch of

self-help and like how to catch a date and money success gym, like all of those books, people are sounding the alarms. Like that sets them off immediately. Ooh, this person is a philosopher. Got braiding sweet grass. Yeah. The organized mind. Yeah, definitely a philosopher. But also, what do we think of this stacking technique? We've got we've got horizontals, we've got verticals, we've got both on the same shelf. Uh this is chaos to me. Like how are you getting that book at the bottom?

That's a big part of the subreddit is people won't just comment on the book. on the shelf, but they'll comment on the way that they're put on the shelf. Like if you've put all these books in a way that makes it seem like it's hard to get the book out of the shelf, people will say like, oh, you're not actually a reader. You're like, you've just got this.

show or like maybe your books are stacked like that because your mind is so like full and crazy. I mean it's people will make all kinds of leaps and bounds based on the organization of the shelf too. So what did people say about this this person? Were they like, yeah, stick with this? this person who owns this shelf, or were there any red flags? What's the analysis in these eight hundred and twenty-five comments?

I think people were really struck by like the variety on this person's shelf. Braiding sweet grass is always a green flag for thoughtfulness. So someone says they had a negative impression, but once they saw that book, they thought he was okay. People love this kind of post and some folks even try to like reverse engineer the energy. I saw one post that asked, like, what are your top green flag books for a single 40 male? And everybody in the comments of that post was

ripping this person to shreds because they thought like this if you if you want to have a bookshelf like you should actually read the books that you're gonna put on it. Like don't try and source what's the best looking from this subreddit. People did not sit well with that post in part. I wonder how long this subreddit has been around. February seventeenth, twenty twenty one.

It's a pandemic. 2021. Okay, that makes so much sense to me because what happened during the pandemic, we all started getting on video calls, and what was our backdrop? our bookshelves. I mean not not so much mine, but I feel like the art of the bookshelf didn't matter as much until everyone started being invited into our virtual spaces and the bookshelf became

became the backdrop by which you were judged. Like the color scheme, the variety. And so it makes perfect sense to me that this is a this subreddit is a pandemic baby. I think you're on to something because, you know, when I was looking into this, it really reminded me of that I think it was a Twitter account that was like room rater that used to rate the backgrounds behind people who would appear on TV.

Um online and this reminded me so much of that. I mean I think it's like Your home is a private space in a lot of senses, but when it's visible, there's a certain like There's a at least like an added level of a space in which you're performing that maybe you wouldn't have been before. Hmm. Although I don't know how true that actually is, because I feel like as a person who's been a reader all my life, I'm always thinking about how my bookshelves look tough.

It's interesting. The the it's it's a lot of it is not like here's a picture of my shelf. It's here's somebody else's shelves. Tell me more which I find very I'm also seeing another example of this, a snapping a surreptitious photo of the person you're dating's bookshelf. And this particular bookshelf. I'll just read some of the titles. I don't know many of these books or the authors, but we've got The Art of Seduction, Mastery, Money Mammoth.

Seven habits of highly effective people. Lots of books with money and power in the title. Mm-hmm. Um strength training book. Bigger learner str nope, bigger leaner stronger. Very different than bigger learner stronger. Tell us uh what the analysis was of this bookshelf. The crowd the crowd wasn't feeling Too hot about this one. I mean, one of the comments says he's not that curious about the world around him and mostly cares about money.

Another person just wrote, girl, run, which like concise, but um and then you know another person said money, success, bodybuilding. This is an entitled vain individual that is convinced. They're smarter, stronger, tougher than everyone else. So you know, it can be very easy to kill the vibe, uh if you post a bookshelf of someone you're dating and people are like, I don't like it. But maybe we all have our own set of uh Bookshelf red flags, red bookmarks. Maybe.

Just dismembering bodies for beginners. Oh God. That was a good thing. I think instead of girl run it's Girl Run and call nine one one if you see on someone's show. Do you have these books? This is getting oddly specific. I need an update on this post. I need to know if this person did run as a result. Like are we getting real results out of this subreddit or are we just trying to get an get an analysis here?

For what it's worth, I I have scrolled pretty far and I haven't seen OP in the comments at all. So it's possible she ran and she's she's still running to this day.

So I I just sent you guys my bookshelf. Okay. You want to show you a shape? The first title, Ben, I see, is Please Kill Me. Please Kill Me is a great book. It's a it's an oral history of the punk scene of New York. And 70s and 80s. Um, and also I think Detroit, it's not as uh creepy as it sounds. I find it fascinating that you also have a dictionary on your shelves. I don't think I own it.

Really? Well maybe that's an analog, that's a reflection of my analog life. I I have um my family is all uh always used to have like an open, unabridged dictionary in the living room. Just delete'cause we be look'cause we be looking. I also should admit that I don't have Lord of the Rings on this shelf, but I definitely have Lord of the Rings. I also have like another very like You have the Hobbit. I yes, I have the Hobbit. I also have another very kind of like dude-centric uh sci-fi.

Uh the internet loves this thing, which is uh Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but it slaps. It's it still slaps, I'm just saying. Uh and then I also have The Watchman. Do you have any reading suggestions for me, Kolyani? Well, I mean if you enjoyed the comments, what are your most judgmental comments? Your most judgmental comments. Okay. All right. I'm ready. Um This bookshelf, it looks to me like someone who spent a lot of time in the nineties. Like it very much the the type of w

That sounds like you were a time trapper. Oh, took a vacation down in the nineties. How dare you, madam? I mean even the type of needs needs updating is what you're saying. Needs updating. Needs updating. Needs updating. Needs um maybe like one to two more fiction. books. You haven't read a book since nineteen ninety two. Well no, there's where the crawdad sing is I think the newest book that I can spot on

So I'll give you that. Oh God. Okay, fair. And I do like Watchmen. So I will one more point for that. Um, but I I would look at this book and guess like. This person has not been to a bookstore. Well, maybe spends a lot of time in used book stores, which there's nothing wrong with news used book stores. I love used book stores, but they typically tend to have old That would be my big takeaway. I'm sorry.

Here's the other thing that's like hard, right? So I'm I'm I'm married to a librarian. And so like a lot of books never end up on the shelf because We basically don't buy books in my house, but I've got book I've got f full on libraries. flying through my house at all times. Most of the most of the time they're being read by my wife and my children and not me because I'm reading Reddit. But uh but I feel like uh but I feel like there's you know, the books that we do have

Listen, it's outdated, but it's you know, there's been some newer books coming in, but they're library books and they sit next to our bed and I don't read them. So I mean, I'm a big library reader too. And it's curious to think also about like the books that you you choose to have physical copies of and you choose to have on your shelves. Maybe people gave them to you, but like for me, I know that I only buy copies of books that I've already read and loved for the most part.

Should we start a subreddit that's my library checkout pile? Spoken like a true husband of a librarian. You're working for big library and I support it.'Cause you know what? Libraries need all the love that they can get and deserve all the love they can get. Damn skippy. So if that gets people to go to the library the same way that the pandemic and bookshelves being

in backdrops inspired people to post their bookshelves and thus maybe care about them a little bit more and invest in them a little bit more. Again, just my theory, but I think it's a good one. Then I'm all I'm all for it.

I was in a library the other day that was um close to where I live, which is far from the subject matter of this, but they had like a new display up. And it was either called Swamp Core or like Swamp Fix. And it was just fiction that just like took place in the swamp. My friend just read an ogre romance uh for charity. So it it's it exists, it's out there. My friend just read an ogre romance.

Romance for charity. That's believable this episode. I can't say more than that. The rest is a secret. You know what, Kalyani? Same. Same. That's that's the more important detail. My friend also just read an ogre romance for charity. If anybody would like me to read an ogre romance for charity, I am available. I'll send you the title Ogre Romances. We'll do book club after this and it's gonna be only ogre romances. Love that for us. Oh man.

Well Kalyon. Thank you for this. Thank you. Thank you for um perusing the shelves. Perusing the the digital shelves of Bookshelves Detective and um This was joyful and and a little judgy, but hopefully in a good way. Thank you for uh coming to the swamps with me. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Kalliani Sixena and Grace Tatter and hosted by me, Amory Sievertson, and me, Kalyani Sixena, and Ben Book, Brock Johnson.

It was edited by Meg Kramer, mix and sound design by Marquisne. The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Chiosna Bernadot, our production manager Paul Vikis, Emily Jenkowski, and our managing producer, Summitoshi. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities, dusty shelves, and sexy spines. Do you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other wild story from the internet that you want us to tell? Hit us up, endlessthread at wbur.org.

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