I can’t be the only Doper who does this.
When I see a working-from-home newscaster, they are usually filmed standing in front of a shelf full of books.
I always concentrate more on which books are on the shelves and whether I can identify any of them than what the reporter is saying.
I give myself a point for every title I recognize, 3 points if I own it.
mmm
One of our local traffic reporters is doing her reports from her kitchen (not that there’s any real need for traffic reports) Directly behind her are several wine racks. Man, she has a LOT of wine in those racks.
Yeah, that goes for anyone’s bookshelves, though.
And on a somewhat related note, it burns my ass when those home design shows turn the books around backwards or put color-coordinated covers on them.
You and me both!! I was at a friends house. She has a stack of old books on her mantle. The bindings are facing backwards. I, being a lover of books, asked her about these books. She said they had been her dad’s when he was a kid. They were classics like Treasure Island. I thought to myself why wouldn’t you have the bindings facing out and show what the books are? So I asked her. She said - that’s how Joanne and Chip do it in HGTV. UGH
Yeah, I’m often tempted to do this, but I can’t always get a good enough look at them to tell what they are.
Crap. I thought I was insane. Looking behind the moving mouths.
Gloria ??whats-her-face on CNN has a complete set of Foxfire books on her shelving.
I never took her for a outdoorsy type.
And lordy-be not a speck of dust or misplaced item.
Some of the bric-a-brac is interesting too.
I like your point system MMM, think I’ll start doing that.
Haven’t these broadcasters learned how to do a virtual background? When I’m talking to someone on Zoom, I’m either on the bridge of the Enterprise, or in Bag End.
Maybe they are. They’re showing artificially neat home backgrounds.
I always check out the bookshelves and photos. I usually can’t make out the titles but sometimes I can. I’m more on the lookout for items that might have been inadvertently left in view of the camera, like dildos or bongs. I haven’t spotted anything good yet.
I recall a New Yorker cartoon from decades ago.
A man is in a bookstore talking to the clerk:
“I need three feet of green books”.
mmm
She may also be doing this to protect them from sun exposure.
Both my work and my home laptops are plugged into a large external monitor via a KVM switch. No webcam, so no need for me to learn how to do this.
Of course, the last two days I haven’t been working thanks to a massive case of conjunctivitis (or maybe ocular cellulitis, but I’m leaning to the former thanks to other symptoms) that is mostly sealing one eye shut. Still, the swelling has reduced a bit and I’m getting better at functioning with only one eye, so I will probably be working again tomorrow.
Probably just as well that there’s no webcam going on. No one needs to see the puffy red sealed eyelids, right?
I haven’t been paying attention to the books on news reporters, though. I can never see the titles.
Back in a previous life, when I was a library bookstore volunteer, we would occasionally get requests like this. We were happy to oblige; it was a great way to get rid of things we otherwise couldn’t have sold.
I not only look behind the talking head, but if I watch the person multiple times over the course of a few days I look to see if anything has been moved.
I also do this with fictional TV shows and movies—whenever there are books visible on screen, my eyes are irresistibly drawn to them.
I was watching Midsomer Murders last night, and there was a scene in a bookstore. I was so preoccupied with identifying the books that I didn’t pay any attention to Inspector Barnaby questioning the bookstore owner.
I saw a rubics cube on someones shelf. It wasn’t solved.
A somewhat related thing that always irks me is when you’re in a shop or restaurant that uses old books for decoration, but the books are glued or screwed down so you can’t actually read them.
Last night one of the weather guys was doing the weather from his back deck, and his grill was right behind him with the grill cover on. When he was on again a little later, the cover had been taken off. I guess he was getting ready to do some grilling once the news was over.
Supposedly, and I cast a rather jaundiced eye over this explanation, the home decor shows do it to avoid having the book titles needing to be cleared by their legal team and pass it off as a design choice that dum-dums then follow.
On a (slightly) related note, I noticed that Nicolle Wallace (MSNBC, Deadline: White House) looks quite different since she started doing the broadcast remotely. It isn’t a matter of being poorly groomed — she’s not — but being at home with a young son probably rules out devoting the amount of time she would have spent in hair & makeup at the studio.
Now if only the interviewees would have the same consideration for the audience. I can certainly buy that an ER physician would look disheveled, but a lot of them have no obvious excuse for looking like the morning after the night before.