Seeing recent book art postings Stumbled Upon has led to two discoveries: 1.) StumbleUpon has grown a hell of a lot since the last time this happened, 2.) There is a small but vocal contingent of people who are morally opposed to book art of any kind when it involves the carving and sculpting of books. Book art objects, such as these two by our man Brian Dettmer, are an abomination for these folks because people should be reading books for the love of God, not slicing them up and selling them as art objects.

They have an argument, if you discount the fact that the advent of mass production in the 19th century has ensured that we will never experience a book shortage. And if you’ve never worked at a bookstore, you might not be aware of the standard practice of regularly dumping large numbers of remaindered and stripped books that won’t sell. And if you haven’t tried it yourself you might not know that forcing people to read books takes all the fun out of them.

But what this sentiment illustrates is that books are still venerated cultural objects with a lot of power, and that’s what gives good book art its power. Artists like Dettmer excite people because they allow them to see these sacred book objects in shocking new ways. They’re doing more to bring awareness to books than the book protectors ever will. They’re giving old books new life (not unlike Google, another foe of some in the trade).