I has a library!

[wendyzski]

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?

Comments

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

Living in very small studio apartments and then moving twice in 3 years AFTER reaching the point of my life where I actually have to PAY movers because my friends are old and creaky has changed my view of books to some extent. So has PaperbackSwap and the online reserve system of the Chicago Public Library.

Moving/rearranging/getting new shelves is an occasion to do a bit of culling. I look at the books and unless I love them, will reread them at least every 2 years or want to have around for research purposes, I don't keep them. I can send them on to people who WANT them much more than I do. Contrarywise, I can find a new author and pick up their entire backlist in one swell foop for only a few dollars in postage. If I kind of like a series but not enough to want to buy it all, I can usually lay my hands on a copy of a book for free within 2 weeks through inter library loan.

For example - I really liked the early Anita Blake books (before they turned into porn). I used to buy them all as soon as they came out, and this even carried over a bit into hardcover. But the series really went downhill for me and pretty much anything after Obsidian Butterfly I can't stand. I even put them up on a top shelf because I never looked at them. Well, when I rearranged things today I took a close look at which books I actually WANTED to have around for rereading purposes and which I hadn't touched since the initial read. So why have I been paying to haul them around? Let's cut to the chase as I'm sure there are poor deluded people who actively want to take them off my hands. Danse Macabre is already packed for shipment and three others I'm just waiting for the members to log in and respond to their wishlisting of three others.

I still have what most people (who are not geeks) would consider a ridiculous amount of books. But now pretty much all of them are there for a REASON.

[aedifica]

I'm closer to that philosophy than I used to be (and have weeded out the ones I know I won't read again), but still very emphatic that I want to be able to read whatever book I get the craving for at midnight if the desire strikes me. :-)

[starstraf.livejournal.com]

mom read me Farenheight 451 as a small girl - I must have all the books to keep them safe.