Welcome to LAMB!

Books, of course, are objects to be read. But they are also objects to be worn. We carry them by our sides, let them peek from full purses and briefcases, tuck them under sprays of newspaper in our arms, and read them, quite conspicuously, in Metro cars, parks, and coffee shops. When thinking of books in this way, it then makes thorough sense to consider the look of your book in concert with your outfit before popping out the door. After all, one of the Latin terms for book is vade mecum—meaning "come with me."

I started pairing books with my outfits in high school. The first book was a bright goldenrod-colored copy of The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot. It was my father's when he was about my age, and I soon found, after I had discovered the poetry inside, that the bright yellow not only cheered me up on my way to geometry class but tended to complement many of the items in my wardrobe. Nodding to that little book, I've made the exclamation mark in LAMB's logo the same hue as that book.

The main reason I don't want a Kindle is because it makes every book look the same. James Walcott expounds on this point in the August 2009 issue of Vanity Fair:

Books not only furnish a room, to paraphrase the title of an Anthony Powell novel, but also accessorize our outfits. They help brand our identities. At the rate technology is progressing, however, we may eventually be traipsing around culturally nude in an urban rain forest, androids seamlessly integrated with our devices. As we divest ourselves of once familiar physical objects—digitize and dematerialize—we approach a Star Trek future in which everything can be accessed from the fourth dimension with a few clicks or terse audibles. Reading will forfeit the tactile dimension where memories insinuate themselves, reminding us of where and when D. H. Lawrence entered our lives that meaningful summer. “Darling, remember when we downloaded Sons and Lovers in Napa Valley?” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. The Barnes & Noble bookstore, with its coffee bar and authors’ readings, could go the way of Blockbuster as an iconic institution, depriving readers of the opportunity to mingle with their own kind and paw through magazines for free. Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized.

On this site, I'll be pairing people and their outfits with books. I will mostly do so in terms of design. I will also post pictures of people with books, such as this one:









If you want to tip me to a particular photograph of a person or book cover, please write a comment on the latest post or send me an email.