published about 4 hours ago
Olivia Rodrigo is involved in another controversy, but this one isn’t about plagiarism accusations. Instead, it’s about her bookshelf.
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In a recent Instagram post, the bestselling singer-songwriter revealed that she keeps her Grammy trophies on a bookshelf. Nothing odd there, but if you check the titles around her awards, you’ll notice there are none. That’s because most of her books are displayed with the spines facing in and the pages facing out — a controversial topic from just a few years ago.
The issue of books arranged backwards exploded in 2017, when DIY experts tried it out and received widespread disapproval. People thought that it made, you know, finding the book you wanted to read difficult.
The design choice, and the backlash that ensued, then caught the attention of media outlets — such as BuzzFeed, TODAY, and Apartment Therapy, to name a few. The trend died down shortly afterward (or so we thought).
Why would anyone display their books backwards? The reason is that it creates a clean and cohesive aesthetic, with the pages providing a white palette instead of the spines providing a spectrum of random colors.
“I hated how we had so many books, but they were all different colors,” Jen Birkhofer, VP of Commerce at NBC, told TODAY. “I’d tried to kind of color block them and make them look nice — as Pinterest has shown me — but it just didn’t work.”
Whether you love or hate the unconventional style, it looks like it could be making a comeback this year, thanks to Olivia Rodrigo and her Grammy-adorned shelves. Expect this aesthetic to appear in Gen-Z bedrooms and all over TikTok soon.
What do you think? Are you on Team Spine In or Team Spine Out?
