We are so accustomed to the ubiquity and ordinariness of books that we are not surprised when a variety of things appear in front of us in the form of books. The author suggests taking a closer look at how a person learned to value not so much the content in a book, but rather the outer shell, turning books into other objects, making dummies of books, decorating interiors with trompe l’oeil, using images of books in painting. Before us is an alternative history of book culture, numbering more than five hundred years. With the invention of the printing press, the book ceases to be a sacredly treasured, highly revered object. Now it is an anti-relic, and sometimes an image of the powerlessness of the mind. Society begins to especially value the decorative function, and now a paper book becomes an art object or part of it.