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01Consuming Media 10/4/07 11:17 am Page 77

Books may also improve one’s status, some of them thought, which is related to
the ways in which identity is constructed and communicated to the outside world.
Book lovers expand their book collections through various status-raising practices. It
might be a question of hiding or cleaning out. One man admits that he organizes his
books in such a way that he keeps ‘questionable’ literature out of sight; a woman says
that she gets rid of ‘crappy books’ that she does not want to show on her shelves. It
might also be a question of holding up literature that is counted as ‘high-brow’, as
for example this 27-year-old woman librarian:
It could also be status! I blushingly admit that I have a few books visible on the
shelves just because they represent bookish culture itself. Do I have to say more
than ‘In Remembrance of Things Past’ by Marcel Proust? If it is not status, why
then is there greater demand for leather-bound 24-volume encyclopedias than
the same facts collected on a shiny CD-ROM for the computer?
Judging from the answers, beside the reading experience itself, it is the rereading,
lending and identity forging aspects that provide the most important utility values in
ownership. But other uses also appear in the answers, though less frequently. Many of
our informants emphasized that books are aesthetically pleasing. ‘Books are beautiful,’
one of them writes. ‘I think that bookcases crammed with books are such a beautiful
sight,’ someone else says. It is thus not only the content that is important, but also the
aesthetic form. If books are pleasing the owner can also use them when he or she is
not reading them, taking pleasure in the sight of shelves filled with attractive books.
From the above account of the discussion group’s answers and discussion, the
following factors emerge as to why it is important to own books and what specific
uses come with ownership: (1) the reading experience, (2) the opportunity to reread
books, (3) lending them to friends, (4) the construction and communication of iden-
tity, and (5) the aesthetic satisfaction. Consequently, books that are owned have uses
that borrowed books do not have. The remainder of this chapter will dwell on a
further (sixth) utility value for bought books that paradoxically involves a deliberate
disposal of them.

BOOKS AS GIFTS
All commodities are charged with meaning and are thus communicative. 15 When
commodities are transformed into gifts, they also mark special occasions and specific
relations between a giver and a receiver. Gifts are not given to just anyone; the donor
has to have some kind of relationship with the receiver – he or she is not a complete
stranger. Nor are gifts given at any time, rather they mark specific, festive occasions
such as Christmas, birthdays or weddings. Gifts can also be given at less special
events, as a present to a dinner party’s host, or just as a surprise in everyday life. In
this context the gift works as the marker of something special – the everyday is turned
into a party through the gift.
The anthropologist Nicholas Thomas criticizes ‘gift theoreticians’ such as Marcel
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Mauss for not being sufficiently attentive to the objects, the things given. Whether

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