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

[katexxxxxx.livejournal.com]

PS: The cookbooks are in the dining room.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

my cookbooks are in the kitchen, and I am pondering putting the "sewing" books (as opposed to the costuming ones) in the sewing/rehearsal/office room - which is where the sheet music lives.