I have noticed over the years that every so often magazines (and now blogs) feature beautiful spreads of book-filled rooms, with headlines like "Living With Books" or "The Pages of Our Lives." Usually the images feature poetic, far-off places where leather volumes fill 4.5-meter-tall, wood-paneled shelves, or sparse rooms with gauzy curtains and stacks of books on the floor, standing like architectural columns. As a book lover, I find these rooms transporting and inspirational — but totally out of touch. A growing number of people, I think, don't have books. After all, who wants those heavy, clunky volumes when you can store a seemingly endless library on a device that weighs less than a single paperback?

So this leads me to wonder: In a world without books, what happens to our bookshelves?

Unfortunately, bookshelves are suffering from the same fate as the television armoire — some of us just don't need them. Instead of housing our libraries, bookshelves have become the dumping ground fork knickknacks, mail, papers, picture frames, empty vases and, on occasion, an actual book. The empty cavities attract only chaos and disorder. Of course, there are things you can do to improve your shelves' appearance in the absence of books: Fill them with smart-looking storage boxes, display a well-edited collection of ceramics or other objects, or use pictures, either leaning or hung over the shelf, to fill voids. Just keep in mind that, unlike closets and closed cabinets, open shelves reveal everything, which means one needs to take more care in their styling.