To each their own.
The huge margins all around the screen, wasting large amounts of screen real estate on both the iPad and iPhone, are unpalatable for me -- skeuomorphism here or there. I find it mind-boggling iBooks doesn't give users the option to reduce the margins. Not to mention iBooks's woeful lack of functionality and layout customisation options. ("Apple's customisation options" almost sounds like an oxymoron.)
Now, the wooden bookcase may have been "cheesy". (I didn't think so.) But the replacement?
Shades of grey stripes with some two-dimensional, pointedly
flat book covers slapped onto them? I was gobsmacked. My goodness, I'd call this the
antithesis of aesthetics.
Anyway, as mentioned, to each their own.