Generally speaking, I hate being “fed” reels or media on Instagram.

I follow who I follow, and until I hit the Explore button, I’d love nothing more than for the Meta-owned platform to just let me see my friends’ kids and dogs.

But recently, I got a promoted reel from a woman who re-binds all of her books into the aesthetics of the Penguin Clothbound Classics

I couldn’t embed the video, but if you click on the image it’ll take you to her Insta profile. Yes, that’s my comment!

The skill and creativity of crafting with books is something I greatly admire.

Frankly, bookbinding is a skill that I am very jealous of– it’s difficult to do well, and the multiple skills the artist uses in order to make her books into works of art are incredibly impressive.

And yet, many of her comments are about how it “hurts” users to see the artisan rip up her books– doing away with the original covers, and a few extraneous pages here and there.

Books are just things. The words inside them are what matter.

I won’t tell anyone not to have emotional attachments to stories, but I want to remind you: books are just objects. The actual printed pages and covers and heft and 3D space-taking-up body of a book is just a thing. Ripping off the covers, crafting with the pages, and doing stuff with the paper or cardboard parts of a book is not harming something. A book has no feelings. A book is not a sentient thing. It is not an animal or human being. It is just woodpulp and ink.

The story is what matters, not the talismanic concept of a book.

The reason I’m talking about this is actually BECAUSE of book banning initiatives. I want people to really grasp that the format of the ideas is not what matters. It’s the ideas themselves. Book banners want to do a bait and switch: not that book, but this book. Libraries can still have books, so long as they are books we approve of. Publishers won’t get attacked for making books, so long as they’re the books we write.

The object of the “book” has no meaning. It is the stories that matter.

Stories used to be oral. Then they were on scrolls. Then they were in handwritten, bound books then they were in printed, bound books. Now they can be delivered to electronic devices.

Mississippi just banned Libby and Overdrive and Hoopla (eBook sharing programs used by libraries) for anyone under the age of 18 because they don’t think minors should have unfettered access to stories. Not books. I’m sure they’d be thrilled if every minor in the state had to download the King James Bible onto their phones, or conspiracy-laden, bigotry-derived bullshit from Christian evangelists. They don’t want minors– or anyone, really– to have access to stories written by and for or about LGBTQ+ people

Stories. Focus on the stories and not the books.