For Covers' Sake

Book covers have always stood out to me, but especially when someone uses books as decoration in their house. I remember one year going to a New Years Eve party at a classmates' house who had one of those obnoxious McMansions. My friend and I decided to wander around (as one does) and we found a library with huge dark wood shelves, completely stocked with books. All the books had this old, slightly uniform but just unique enough, look about them. When we opened them, however, they were filled with essentially gibberish. I remember one of them was about dentistry... Clearly, the books had been ordered in bulk by an interior designer or something. 

At first I found this really astounding but then I started thinking about another friend of mine whose parents are both really smart/ well educated, and who also has a lot of book shelves in her house. The books in her house are real books, yes, but it seems like they never move. The same Zora Neale Hurston book is always sitting on the same table, etc. It seems like some weird kind of performative identity, having a book for the sake of having one. It's almost like buying an impressive book gives an individual more intellectual clout than actually reading it and having something impressive to say.

I think that book cover art definitely has something to do with this. Personally, I care a lot about the covers of books. I can't quite explain what kinds of covers appeal to me, but I think the older/ more classic a cover looks, the more I like it. The books that I've read/ been reading this semester are all sitting on my desk and I like looking at them all stacked up there. Some of them were gifts (ironically given to me by my friend with the perfectly placed books in her house), and the others I purchased because I wanted to read them. One night, though, my roommate and I were sitting on her bed, facing my desk and she told me that she always looks at my bookshelf and thinks "wow, Ellie is so smart". This wasn't the intention of having my books conveniently stacked next to my bed, but now it's all I can really think about. 

No one with a fancy house would boast titles like Diary of a Wimpy Kid or 50 Shades of Gray on the book shelf in their living room. So why are certain titles deemed more scholarly than others? Are certain forms of reading more valuable than others and do any of you guys ever buy a book for the sake of owning a copy of it?