The World's Most Boring Book Display

It happens all the time. I think of a scathingly brilliant idea for a book display, I sit down at the catalogue and dig up a great range of titles, I get hold of a trolley with which to carry my haul of great books...

But then I get there and find out that, thanks to our policy of removing dust-covers, the books are dead boring to look at. Either that, or books I think are really interesting are so old and well-used that the covers are practically falling apart. If the insides weren't worth keeping we would have thrown them out years ago.

Well, the other day I had three brilliant ideas in a row - and every single one of them had to be "re-thought" due to the fact that the covers weren't much to look at.

In despair I sat down with a colleague and tried to work out a way I could salvage any of my ideas... When the idea slowly dawned on me.

I had been talking to a someone the other day about turning one's weaknesses into strengths and then playing to one's strengths. Having boring or ugly book covers was my weakness - so I should turn it into my strength. Make it the point, rather than the problem.

Thus, we now have the world's most boring book display sitting proudly in the middle of our library. There's no theme, rhyme or reason to it. The only thing the books really have in common is that we wouldn't normally put them on display.

They cover subjects such as reptiles, the universe, puppet theatre, children's street games, scientific reasoning, classic novels... Most of them are really interesting once you pick them up and take a look at the insides.

Now all that remains to be seen is if anyone picks them up to look at the insides. Apart from the nice big A3 sign that says "Don't Judge a Book by its Cover", there isn't a lot of colour to attract attention.

I wonder if anyone will look at them at all...