What’s on *your* bookshelf?

It’s been several months now since many, if not most, of our interactions — meetings, interviews, book clubs — have gone online, and Zoom has afforded us all an interesting (dare I say voyeuristic?) look into other people’s homes.

My most recent chuckle comes from the Twitter account @RateMySkypeRoom, in which the user rates the backgrounds people choose for their videoconferencing. (A recent one: “Hostage video with a nice piece of art. Kidnappers with taste. 6/10.” What’s not to love?)

And then there are the books. A well-stocked bookshelf has become the essential videoconferencing prop. Who among us hasn’t scanned the titles of books used in background shots? The very enterprising Brattle Bookshop, unable to open because of the pandemic, actually took photos of shelves arranged with selected books to send to people to use as backgrounds. Your own literary tastes not sophisticated enough? We have you covered!

There’s a more serious side to it, of course. We listen to experts because we want to believe they know what they’re talking about. What better way to communicate one’s expertise than being featured in front of a carefully curated library? You can usually — sometimes with some facial gymnastics — pick out a few titles, and most tend to be very serious: economics, politics, history, biography. (The Portuguese recently demanded the…