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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

The anal bookcase

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The Return Of Rothkoid

21:18 / 23.02.03

So. I'm in the middle of unpacking stuff from my move. And I get to the part I've been dreading: the bookshelf-packing.

When I say that, I mean the part that I love. Except not until much after the fact. See, a friend came over and helped me unpack the boxes of stuff - for which I am very grateful - but at the moment they're just packed out any which way on three sets of shelves. No order, no nothing - terrible! So I was wondering: how much do people order their books here? Are you a strictly alphabetical kind of suit, or is there something more loose to your stacking?

Me, I go by vaguely thematic. Occulty stuff: together. Design stuff: together. Poetry: together. Ackroyd and Murakami? Together as I like them both a lot. It's disorganised order, but I wonder if it's common.

Shelving. Talk about it, y'all.

21:29 / 23.02.03

What a title!

Erm, alphabetical or bust - so bust. I did once try to arrange my books by publishers, but I got fed up halfway through and went back to alphabetical... but ever since I wetn to university it's been totally impossible to keep my books in any sort of order, and now several hundred of them are in bags on my bedroom floor at home anyway. But the good thing is that I still know where they all are, so I can ask my parents to send me something which they will find in the middle of the bottom shelf of the brown bookcase (The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon...). This is what comes of spending hours at a time just communing with one's books.

Here I have my history & reference books above my desk (or in practice in a tottering pile on my desk) and the other ones by my bed. At home all my boys' school stories are in one place and all the girls' ones in another, but that's the only kind of system. Probably because I am irretrievably untidy.

22:12 / 23.02.03

My main bookshelf is organized by author since it's all fantasy/sci-fi stuff. If the author's written a couple of trilogies or the like, I try to keep them together, but it's not something I worry too much about. I have a general idea of where all my books are. My secondary shelf (my closet), is a disorganized mess. I have the overflow from my main shelf leaning against and stacked up on tech manuals, occulty stuff, books on medieval arms and armour, comic books, art books, "classics" and a bunch of other types. Unfortunately, I have little idea of what exactly is contained here. I have a little two story wall-shelf I put up and that holds my trade paperbacks. I have a nightstand sitting next to my desk that holds my Calvin and Hobbes and Dilbert collections.

So, I suppose I could say my sorting system is a sort of loose author/genre/type system.

Goodness Gracious Meme

22:57 / 23.02.03

Ha. thought so. . (re the abstract.)

Er, I squeeze them in wherever they'll fit. The stuff I'm currently reading usually ends up in bed with me at some point...

Do I get drummed out of Books?

23:21 / 23.02.03

I find it impossible to keep things in any kind of order (books, CDs, records, whatever), so don't bother trying to organise them in the first place. It's not really worth it when you've got stuff strewn all over the floor, anyway. The only exceptions to this rule are the few work-related books and couple of dictionaries I keep right in front of me on the desk for easy reference. It's very much a case of me knowing where everything is, but anybody else having no chance.

Tryphena Absent

23:50 / 23.02.03

Ooh, everything's themed and arranged by genre, schoolgirl's must not be mixed with dramatic twenty year olds or screeching wizard's. In fact they must not even be on the same shelf. All author's must be next to each other at all times while books are shelved, luckily I own no Iain Banks, so problem solved. Fiction and non-fiction must not be mixed unless the fiction is bought for work purpose and most importantly all books must have date of purchase on the first page so that I can keep track of them chronologically. One day, when I'm old, the shelves will work on timescale.

08:15 / 24.02.03

I'm exactly the same as you Rothkoid (and let's hope for both our sakes that that's the last time I'll utter that sentence).

Thematic is the way to go, and within poetry or fiction I clump together favourite authors. Once I have two or more books by one author than they get promoted to sit next to others of whom I have two or more, and once I run out of those all the singletons go together.

Well, that's how I ordered my beloved books many moons ago and that's where they remain, on the other side of the flippin' world. *sob* But they know I love them in all their ordered beauty.

The Return Of Rothkoid

10:05 / 24.02.03

[threadrot]
I unpacked my copy of The Cantos yesterday with loving care, too...
[/threadrot]

11:23 / 24.02.03

[even more threadrot but hey it's your thread]Fortunately that was one of the few books I brought with me. Life without Ez is no life at all![/even more threadrot but hey it's your thread]

15:02 / 24.02.03

My books used to be in vague alphebetical order, but that annoyed the shit out of me, cos different sized books were next to each other, and cos it made me seem all pedantic & anal. So now they've gradually changed to size order, with maximum consideration going to how efficiently more books can be stacked on top.

This doesn't however apply to the "weird shelf" on which all my horror / magic books are kept, which is appropriately left in complete chaos.

I'm sure you were all eager to know that.

Constitution Hill

15:05 / 24.02.03

My skiffy books are pretty well-ordered, all being in one bookcase, double-stacked and sorted with due consideration of author and size. But then it gets squiffy, as i have a bookcase of oversized and otherwise problematical books, a bookcase of books i have yet to read, which has now overflowed onto both my bedside tables, and then in a another room i have most of my books stuffed in a very large cupboard. There are also a fwe boxes in the loft here and a couple more in my sisters attic.
I can't wait to move out, but the chances of me ever affording somewhere where they'll all fit is, hmm, unlikely.

If i do though, i think i'd like to order them thematically, and beneath that by size & colour, which would keep most multiple-books-by-same-author together. I need to stop buying books though. For a while at least.

17:36 / 24.02.03

Fiction - alphabetical, primarily, only with piles of SF and fantasy hanging around because that came later, and with huge holes because I'm selling virtually all the straight fiction I own on Amazon.co.uk. Bottom shelf, vaguely ordered by subject - non-fiction. Plastic shelving unit x2 (four drawers) anthropology texts in no real order.

17:50 / 24.02.03

I've just noticed that there *is* some order to mine, but that's only in terms of a vague attempt to keep all an individual author's work together.

18:04 / 24.02.03

no real order at all to mine - just which ever are first out of the box when unpacking... although having said that i do tend to shove some books of the same height together so its easer to put stuff on top of them - and the large reference books tend to go on the top shelf for ease of access...

18:25 / 24.02.03

There's no order to mine at all (except, I now realize, that I purposefully keep the vast majority of my foreign language text books on the same two shelves. Unless I've been using them. Then they end up anywhere.). I've a total of...let's see...6 bookcases across 3 different rooms, (and a billion books in storage at my parents') on which commingle the disparate interests of me and my cohabitant. I never know where anything is, driving me crazy when, for instance, something I want turns out to be in the bedroom when someone's sleeping in there and would not take kindly to an abrupt lighting of the room.

I'm also very guilty of piling recently accessed books flat in front of the shelves obscuring the spines of the properly shelved stuff, instead of finding new homes for them actually nestled with the rest of the books.

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:05 / 24.02.03

I'm guilty of that - well, have been until I was able to buy more bookcases and have somewhere to put them. I feel guilty stacking in front of other books - it's like I'm neglecting them...

All my Magick books are in the bookcase in my bedroom, as well as whatever I'm reading (it's close enough to keep one shelf as a bedside table, and my stereo's also on it) while everything else is in the lounge-room at the moment. Dunno why. I think it is because I truly am ashamed of the cover that's on DMK's Modern Magick. In the same way that I keep the Lovecraft collections I've got in positions that stop their covers from being seen - it's just too embarrassing.

(Loomis: you say Pound, I say Poe - Unca Ed made an appearance yesterday, too...)

21:23 / 24.02.03

I read "The Book on the Bookshelf" a while ago and it was like a book version of this thread. It traced the history of books and book storage methods and discussed the storage of books at various libraries.

It does discuss several - to me - strange storage methods. Would anyone here think to arrange their books by colour or price or year of publication or time of aquisition? The last would actually be fairly interesting for tracking the evolution of reading habits.

Does everyone here use shelves with backs? Does anyone here align their books to the front of the shelf so that they present a unified facade, or do you push the books in so that they touch the back and show peaks and valleys?

Goodness Gracious Meme

22:20 / 24.02.03

Colours sounds fun. I might try that, actually.

Have arranged them by *size* at times, due to having lots of different-sized shelves and too many ridiculously big art books. Cue lots of very tedious swopping to try and fit everything in, a la the Krypton factor.

And gah, you've just reminded me of my best friend, who whenever he comes to a flat of mine, can't rest until he's pulled all the books out so they're flush with the shelves. Fucking freak.

22:21 / 24.02.03

I need more shelving space is what I need. I tend to go thematic- comics are all on one shelf, oversizes on top, trashy novels on one shelf where they won't give the other books ideas, but my most beloved get a place on the top shelf, all together, so I can find them easily.

22:57 / 24.02.03

I've been put off shelving my books by colour, size etc by too many hours spent reading Bookworm Droppings and by the fact that my mother is a librarian - the idea of shelving a library by colour brings me out in hives.

Tweedy lady with colour swatch:
"Do you have a book this colour?"
Bookseller:
"Probably... on what subject?"
TLWCS:
"Anything will do as long as it's this shade and about 6" by 4", but not too thick. I've got a lovely table cloth on a small table, and I thought a book this colour would look good on it..."

Is that horrendously snobby of me? Am reminded of the bloke whose wife forced him to cover all his books in matching fablon...

23:21 / 24.02.03

I don't keep mine in a set order, at least the order changes every time I make a new aquisition. I move house so bloody much that it would be impossible to impose any sort of rigid filing system and I like the element of surprise. You sit there, scan the bookcases and realise all the great stuff you own that you haven't read in ages. I also tend to hide new books in amongst the oldies to eliminate favouritism.

The idea of sorting by date of purchase is good though and I'm fairly sure that I could still get everything into roughly the right order now, even if it meant that I would have to confront my 'Famous Five' phase.

23:23 / 24.02.03

My books are arranged aesthetically, with relation to colours and sizes and laying them on top of each other. But then this is easy, because I own a pitifully small ammount of books, and wish to own many more (but I never get around to reading any, so it would be stupid)

at the scarwash

01:48 / 25.02.03

For fiction, by author's country of origin, unless it's a mystery or a scifi, which are on their own. Occult and religious seperate but adjacent. Language books/dictionaries with the fiction books of that country. Music, art, history have their own place. Verrry anal. But then I buy a bunch of books, or go on a drunken spree and the analness evaporates.

02:18 / 25.02.03

At my parents, where most of my books are, they're shelved:

Hardcovers on top, by height
----------------------------
Fiction by author for many shelves
----------------------------
Non-fiction, history and etc. by author,
language books alphabetically by language

At my apartment now, they're by height, with my beloved 24inch high "History of Cartography" leaning against the wall. It would be a fun idea to try and reshelve everything by the order read/acquired... I've actually kept a list...

03:08 / 25.02.03

Well, my books are mostly arranged by subject matter and then by author within those groups. Books not in this scheme are books I'm reading, have read and not put away yet, and that don't really have a category of their own.

And then there are the magazines and other ephemera (borrowed books and books I need to sell back to the local store) all over...

I actually need another bookshelf, but I don't know where I'd put it. Or what would go on it... I don't really have room for another full-sized book case in the living room, and if I got one and put it in the bedroom, I'm not sure how I'd determine which books would go there.
So, for the time being, I have "excess" books stacked on my end-tables, my desk, the kitchen table, in front of my collection (four shelves' worth) of sci-fi paperbacks, and on top of other books on the shelves.

That t-shirt, "so many books, so little time," was definitely made for me.

10:04 / 25.02.03

My books are in a terrible state of confusion - have been since I moved in with boyfriend about a year ago. We have one small bookshelf which has two layers of books on each shelf - the ones we actually read at the front, and then behind them all the others that we've forgotten about/aren't as cool/don't feel like re-reading yet. Then there are loads resting on top of those. Then there are the piles of unusually large books next to the bookshelf (three piles at the moment, and counting). The only books I can ever locate quickly are new ones (at the front of the bookshelf) or my university books, which are usually under the table.
So no, not very anal about it, I guess...
But then we're moving soon, so for all I know I'll discover a new, more organised side to myself. And we'll get a special Michael Moorcock display case. Or something.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:42 / 25.02.03

Alphabetical every time baby, though my biogs are seperate and alphabetical by subject and my big books (like my Dan Dare comic collections) are just on top of the shelves because there is nowhere else for them to go. The various comic collections tend to go by the title of the comic (excluding 'A', 'The' etc), though my Scott McCloud is under M because I'm an anarchist baby!

My music CDs...

(And hey, I'm not as anal as a friend of mine who's built up a database for his DVDs)

12:50 / 25.02.03

Just been through this myself as I've moved, and got new bookshelves in.
Had to go with size (adjustable shelves), with the heavy ones at the bottom (to stop it falling over, or so I hope), and then pretty random thereafter. For me, the slight inconvenience of not immediately being able to find stuff straightaway is totally outweighed by the amusement factor of seeing stuff like Geri Halliwell's biography next to the Satanic Verses.
Though you may not find such things as chucklesome as I do.

Goodness Gracious Meme

13:17 / 25.02.03

Lada, if you don't organise yr books and cds properly, do you get drummed out of the Librarians' Guild?

Is that horrendously snobby of me? Am reminded of the bloke whose wife forced him to cover all his books in matching fablon...

Quite possibly. And is partly why I want to do it, book display is pretty dull, I quite fancy getting some kitcsh value out of it at least.

I'll get me coat.

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:09 / 25.02.03

(And hey, I'm not as anal as a friend of mine who's built up a database for his DVDs)

Hey - I'm having to do that for my CDs. Because I want to get them insured, as I realised the other day that when they're all unpacked, I think I have about 2500-3000 of them, and I'll be fucked if I'm gonna run the risk of losing a house deposit's worth of music to some junkie fuckhead sometime. And let me tell you, something that just gets the name and details from CDDB is a shitload better than me typing it in by hand - aargh.

Ooh, and it even has a bit to show you who you've loaned what to. Hmmmm.

21:53 / 25.02.03

What is the database you're using Rothkoid? I've been meaning to do the same thing for the same reason but the task is too monumental to start.

nedrichards is confused

11:25 / 26.02.03

I've always fantisied about a barcode scanner and a clever piece of software that talks to the Amazon webservice and puts all of my books in a big database. It wouldn't help me remember where they actually were mind you.

Currently the stacking is Alphabetical by Author and then in whatever way fits most books on a shelf, then the piles on the floor, them too.

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:19 / 26.02.03

The ones available here. There's movie and book ones here, and you can get cracks for them pretty simply. Assuming that's what you're after, I suppose.

13:20 / 26.02.03

My books are ordered in vague catagories, but the two main catagories are Read and Not Read with the Not Read books being on the top. If I have more than one book book by an Author then I group them togther.

Must sort them out some day.... when I live somewhere with a bit more room...

15:27 / 26.02.03

I use a subjective version of the dewey decimal system - without the stickers on the books.

Kids books together, sci-fi/fantasy together, religion together, where it verges on occult, which merges with travel books and travelogues and the occasional picaresque novel (there's a personal, metaphysical reason for that). "Think books" (philosophy, theory, old textbooks) together, near poetry. Cook books together, near reference books and home improvement/interior decor books.
There are also a couple author collections, where I've got a bunch of books by the same person. Vonnegut, Lovecraft, Robbins, Dahl, Wilson.
Pop culture books together (books about the Beatles, Elvis, Billy Jack, tv shows, Broadway). (Although "Are You Hungry Tonight?" is with the cookbooks.) "Classics" are also together, for the most part, and vaguely chronological (Dickens and George Eliot share a shelf, the Iliad, Le Morte D'Arthur and Don Quixote share another shelf).
There are too many books. Far too many.

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