Screening pages, the #bookstagram way
Keeping the love for books alive is a vibrant group of like-minded enthusiasts or bookstagrammers, who have blended their love for social media and books and populated a niche corner of Instagram with dazzling photos of books, against striking backgrounds.
Initially, the trend invoked flak. “Clicking aesthetically pleasing photos of books has always entailed the question, ‘Do you even read?’ There may be some who may not, but majority of us are here for the love of reading,” says Danielle Usha, a bookstagrammer. But with time, bookstagram gained popularity and now encourages collective reading experiences. “It has introduced the concept of buddy reading,” says Tanushri Indoria, another bookstagrammer. And given the Covid-19 crisis, the trend is quite a hit among people, who are now left with little to do. “People who frowned upon the idea of sharing the experience of reading are now constantly sharing photos of their current reads online,” says Ankita Tyagi, a bookstagrammer.
Endorsing their impact is Amit Soni, the social media manager of a publishing house, who says, “There is a wall of standardisation that states what should be read and what shouldn’t. Bookstagrammers are breaking this wall by diluting those boundaries.”