Porn for Bibliofiles

Now get your mind out of the gutter. The only flesh seen in this post comes from a cow, who very graciously gave up his hide for a book binding.
Bibliofiles are not creeps as your mind might have assumed. They are book lovers or can even go so far as being called book connoisseurs who collect rare, signed, or interesting books. Bibliofiles get excited by gold embossed leather binding and believe that there should be a perfume capturing that musty library smell.
Should you spot a bibliofile in their natural habitat of the upper level of an old library, talk to them! They know things! I once talked to a man who showed me an early copy of a Gutenburg Bible and a few other valuable texts. However, never say that you have never heard of Byron, Hugo, or Chaucer. Bibliofiles are provoked by ignorance.

Libraries have a mysterious allure about them. So many thoughts, words, and lives rest in such a quiet place, yet once you open a book, people, places, and stories reverberate inside your mind. Libraries all over the world have devoted their architecture to beauty hoping to match the transcendent thoughts inside the shelves.


Biblioteca Geral University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal


Library of the Benedictine Monastery of Admont, Austria


Abbey Library St. Gallen, Switzerland

Any bibliofile would be drooling right now.

I think that we take books for granted. Ever tried to write a book? a good one? Not easy. It's like trying to create a functioning body out of clay.


Reading, in my opinion, is the most intimate form of communication. It's someone's mind on a page. So as I'm reading a book in the library, carefully turning the pages yellowed and brittle like fall leaves, someone from centuries ago is communicating with me. It puts your own accomplishments into perspective. In a hundred years, will anyone hear my voice? Will my thoughts ever echo in someone else's mind?



Words from centuries ago can still make your throat burn when Edmond Dantes is betrayed or make your heart flip-flop in your chest when Elizabeth agrees to marry Darcy. Surely you can see the power in that, the power of influence.
Bibliophiles appreciate this and want to get as close to the author as possible by collecting signed or original work. A signature kind of gives the work more of an identity than just another printed copy. It's like finding little hairs of an artist's brush trapped in the paint of a masterpiece.