Do you have 'bookshelf wealth'?

Breana Newton, a legal coordinator in Princeton, N.J., who regularly posts about books on TikTok, was among the people who responded to Ms. Blalock's video. “I'm going to show you the wealth on the bookshelf,” says Mrs. Newton, 33. a video of herself. “Finished?”

She then gives viewers a quick tour of her home, showing books everywhere: on shelves, in crowded stacks here and there, and scattered across the bed. There's no sense that the rooms were staged, or that the books were purchased thinking how they would look on Instagram.

In an interview, Ms. Newton said she worries about trends such as bookshelf wealth encouraging overconsumption. This year, she added, she is trying not to buy any new books.

Another critic of the trend, Keila Tirado-Leist, said in a reaction video: “Who benefits from having to constantly name and qualify wealth and link wealth to any style or aesthetic?”

Ms. Tirado-Leist, a lifestyle content creator in Madison, Wisconsin, likened bookshelf wealth to “quiet luxury” and “stealth wealth,” styles that have recently made waves on social media.

Still, she understood that what drives an interior design trend like this is a desire to create a home that feels, well, homey. In another video she described the idea of layering – that is, acquiring pieces slowly and building them up to a finished look, rather than trying to buy a bunch of things at once in an attempt to follow a trend.

“Styling a home takes time,” Ms. Tirado-Leist said.

Another TikTok user to put it even more bluntly in a response to Ms. Blalock's video: “Bookshelf wealth doesn't mean having books. It means you have built-in elements.”