wendyzski | I has a library!

After taking down the wobbly thrice-moved IKEA bookshelves in the hallway and replacing them with the "new" china cabinet that Bill and John helped me haul up my back stairs last night, I then had to ponder what was going to go where. The hallway used to be the "non-fiction" section of my library, organized by general category/era. One example shelf was sailing - pirates - women pirates -women soldiers - courtesans - prostitution - crime history. However, as the upper glass-fronted section of the cabinet is slightly smaller that the shelves it replaced I was forced to ponder exactly what I wanted and where.

I used to organize my fiction by theme as well - however this sometimes meant that the same author was in two different places, and as I picked up new authors their stuff go slotted in wherever it fit, whicn meant that when I actually had a notion to read a particular book there was a lot of wandering about trying to remember what it was 'like'. Since last summer I'd had the vague idea that I should "do something" about this but had no idea what.

So now:

The china cabinet in the hallway now contains my favorite/most prolific/longest-term authors. Those I have more than a shelf worth of their stuff, grouped generally by series. In practical terms, this means my Mercedes Lackey, Katherine Kurtz, Charles DeLint, Anne McCaffrey, Anne Bishop, and Marion Zimmer Bradley.

On the top of the china cabinet is the early Laurel Hamilton stuff that didn't suck, all of my Comic collections (Overboard, Calvin and Hobbes, etc), my Seuss and Muppets, and my games.

Inside the cabinet are blank books, high school and college yearbooks, photo albums, photos, and other "memory" stuff.

All my other fiction is in the living room, generally alphabetically with anthologies in front, running straight across the several shelves. Then some of the "subjects" of my non-fiction start up on the bottom shelf and a half - Home Improvement, Costume/Sewing, Religion, Fannish stuff.

The wooden bookcase on the east wall (that I got from ashtalet) is the primary history/culture/nonfiction section. Top two shelves run from Victorian era through Gilded age, plus the "inappropriate behavior" section (victorian murderesses, turn-of-the-century gangs, pirates, prostitutes, etc) and Social History stuff like Cod, Salt, Rum, witchcraft, plumbing, etc. Third shelf is Medieval/Elizabethan plus "leftovers" (3 books on the Mallory/Irvine expedition, 2 on the Endurance, 3 on Pompeii, etc) and 4th is Japanese - books on kimono, geisha culture, tea, and general culture/history.

The end result should provide a fairly simple flowchart minimizing the number of places I have to look when I want to find a particular book.

I've a small pile to add to my PaperbackSwap list, and another pile of "not sure where this will end up".

How do you organize your books?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Right now? Cookbooks are in shelves in the laundry room right off the kitchen.

SciFi/Fantasy/Fiction are mostly packed but were in Kidling's room.

Sewing/Costuming were in my sewing room and everything else; HowTo, Spiritual, Non-Fiction and Theatrical were all in the built-in shelving in the upstairs hallway and are now sorted and packed.

Until I find my own place, they'll all be in boxes with (hopefully) just the critical stuff I need access to, wherever I am.

Moving sucks. Never enough shelving.

Before I moved here and after I get settled, there will be wire shelving on the backs of all the doors with my SciFi/Fiction alphabetically on them. The only way I can function.

Hm... I have hooks and clothing rails on my doors. There's never enough space to hang things as well as never enough book space.

Never enough wall space to hang all the completed embroideries either. I have a whole shelf of things I've done over the last 15+ years, once the walls in this place were show-cased-packed. I even have things already framed that are standing behind the door in my bedroom... waiting... woe.

Luckily most of my sewing goes and lives with the customers and is THEIR storage problem rather than mine! But I do also have a huge stash of patterns that could do with a bit of a sort out...

The hooks I will put on the bathroom door and a row of 3 sturdy hooks mounted on a piece of wood for 'work clothes' that I wear nearly daily, if I'm sewing at home.

I still have about 8 sets of the double-length white plastic-covered wire shelving that I used in my old duplex. Unless I can find a place I can afford that has enough room for my professional sewing space *and* for a whole library, I'll need to use this method again.

We still have a few spare bits of wall, here and there... Part of the problem is that we both work from home, so work stuff piles up as well as just books!

Ah yeah, I can relate...professional seamstress out of the house and painter and entertainer and...too much damned stuff!

I has a library!

Alphabetically, but...

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