In July, Amazon.com announced that, during the previous three months, it sold more e-books than hardback books. This may or may not portend something about the future of the form in which long chunks of text are published. But what about the future of the long chunks of text that have already been published as physical objects with paper pages bound between covers? There are, after all, many such things around. Set aside any emotional attachment you may feel toward the reading of physical books; the truth is that creative uses for books that do not involve engaging with words on a page already abound.

For starters, books have served as useful raw material for conversion into an impressive variety of artworks. Jacqueline Rush Lee has created a body of work that turns books into organic-looking shapes — sometimes pages are rolled, sometimes they seem to grow from their open covers, sometimes they’re squashed into wholly different forms. Su Blackwell’s intricate cutouts rise from old books like impossible pop-ups; Stephen Doyle has made tanks and staircases from paper pages, resting on open books that serve as pedestals. Guy Laramée and Brian Dettmer have each created compelling three-­dimensional objects by carving or otherwise restructuring books; Robert The has cut books into gun shapes. Thomas Allen has made vivid images of figures rising from lurid pulp paperbacks. Photographers like Paul Octavious, Victor Shrager and Abelardo Morell, among others, have made pictures that linger over book details, or ­rearrange book groups, in memorable ways.

Some old books are converted to more functional uses. Inhabitat.com specifically cited e-reader-fueled “book extinction” when praising the work of a designer making used books into planters. Not long ago I read an online tutorial for using the pages of “cheap paperback books at the thrift store” to make what amounted to wallpaper. (“You don’t necessary [sic] need old antique books, just books with pages with a yellow tint.”) Jim Rosenau’s work is my favorite example: among his more cunning creations are bookshelves and bookcases constructed out of books.

Image Credit... From top: Noi Non Abbiamo Il Dono Dell'Ubiquitå; Paul Octavious; Restoration Hardware.

Rosenau has cited, as partial inspiration, Nicholson Baker’s insightful, and still-relevant, 1995 New Yorker essay, “Books as Furniture.” That article started out by considering the way books functioned as props in mail-order catalogs and went on to deliver a thorough history of book display. Unlike other collectibles, books “represent a different order of plenitude,” Baker observed, one that encompasses “the camel caravans of thought-bearing time to read them through.” Maybe an e-reader signals the same thing. Maybe it doesn’t. But even if books become unnecessary to imply a surplus of mind-leisure time, they are now functioning like catalog props in real life.