Why The Home Edit shouldn’t judge a book by its cover

One genre that stands as a surprising survivor of the great binge-watching explosion is the tidying-up show, which has evolved from its finger-wagging “have you tried putting vinegar on it”, How Clean Is Your House? roots to become a massive industry of Marie Kondo-inspired decluttering, all elastic bands, labels and packed plastic boxes. Snooping around a messy house about to become so neat that I refuse to believe anyone could so much as make a cup of tea and keep it that way is so appealing to viewers that there is a newcomer to the game.

Joanna Teplin and Clea Shearer are the founders of a company called The Home Edit, and have taken their “professional organiser” skills to Netflix for Get Organized with The Home Edit, in which they go into famous people’s houses, and some regular people’s houses, and organise them to within an inch of their lives. This most unassuming of series has stoked a debate so divisive it has the potential to split families down the middle. “Our intention is to give people the tools to make a system that’s smart, sustainable and also beautiful,” says Teplin, at the beginning of the series. And yet, they are advocates of the rainbow bookshelf.

Let it be stated for the record that, while it may be acceptable on an aesthetic level, I do not think that organising books by colour stands up as a sustainable and smart system, and I put it to the jury that these experts in organisation are suggesting a disorganised approach. If books are on shelves to be read and not just looked at – and if books are there for decoration only, then I’ve had an uncracked copy of Infinite Jest for 20 years, so am in no position to judge – then colour is a ridiculous system that requires you to remember a book’s spine before its author, subject and genre. Also, I have found that people who only read non-fiction have very monochromatic bookshelves, though that is, I suppose, an aesthetic in itself.

I have lugged enough boxes of books around enough rented flats, and made enough apologies to removals companies about them, to feel obscenely protective of my books, and every time I move there is a new opportunity to organise them. The best way, in my vast experience, is by genre, then subject. Alphabetical is too much, though I am saving it for retirement. I admit that it looks a state. It’s messy and jumbled. But it’s lived in, and useful, and I prefer it that way.

Brandon Taylor: signs of Real Life in the Booker shortlist

I had just finished reading Brandon Taylor’s Real Life when news came through that it was one of six books on the 2020 Booker shortlist. Real Life is a remarkable, gorgeous debut, that rare novel set against a backdrop of academia that did not leave me wondering why we had to suffer another story about professors and campus politics – but then, it is ambivalent about university life, which might be one of its many charms.

Of all the novels on the shortlist, four are debuts; the headline news was that the list was dominated by Americans, and that The Mirror and the Light had not been selected, meaning that Hilary Mantel could not win it for all three books in the Cromwell trilogy. The freshness of the shortlist has been met with joy in some quarters, and consternation in others. Some have argued that the Booker should mark the pinnacle of literary achievement, that celebrating so many debut authors somehow cheapens what it might mean to get there. Others say it is refreshing; last year’s winner, Bernardine Evaristo, tweeted that she was “so excited by this groundbreaking shortlist for the 21st century”.

I love it. I love the surprise of it, and the fact that it has made some grumble. It looks and feels and sounds different, as if the old guard is shifting and making way for the new. It is a reading list I am keen to keep making my way through (I have four left to go). My copy of Real Life has a little “Booker-prize longlist” sticker in the corner. How wonderful that it needs changing already.

Emily Ratajkowski: a model of articulacy on digital consent

Last week’s must-read appeared in the form of an essay written by Emily Ratajkowski for The Cut, in which she discusses her career as a model and celebrity, and reckons with the economic and emotional consequences of losing control of one’s own image.

She writes about being sued for posting a faceless paparazzi shot of herself to her own social media, about her Instagram posts being turned into art by Richard Prince, and how she eventually bought a painting by Prince of her own post of her own body. Later, she accuses a photographer of sexually assaulting her on a shoot, and gives yet another horrifying account of how photographs of her were used against her without her consent.

It is an incredible piece of writing about fame and agency and how Ratajkowski feels she has been exploited. There was an element of surprise buried in the reactions to it, perhaps even snobbery, that she, a model, could be so articulate about a complex issue. But she has been talking about women’s bodies for some time now, and clearly has a lot to say. While the essay was personal, in this age it spoke more broadly, too, adding to the ongoing, ever-necessary conversation about digital consent.

• Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist