I know it’s weird and obsessive, but if I’m flipping through a magazine and there’s a photo of a bookshelf, or if I’m watching television and one is in the background during an interview, I’m going to stop paying attention to everything else in order to read the spines of the books. I can’t help it. If a scene takes place in a bookstore, I end up missing the dialogue so I can find out if the art director used real or fake books for the set. I read the books behind professors in documentaries, often missing the entire sound bite. I’m usually looking to see if I’ve read the same books, or if I know someone who has written one of those books, or if, you know, the off chance that I wrote the book.

Yesterday, it happened. I’m looking through the West Elm catalog. Page three, stacked on the bookshelf in the corner: Bookmark Now. How cool is that?