Home » Discussion Forums » Blog Post Discussion » Books on Shelves
| Books on Shelves [message #34938] |
Thu, 07 October 2010 20:02  |
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Books on Shelves
Smooshes!
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34941 is a reply to message #34938 ] |
Thu, 07 October 2010 22:03  |
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 boddhi_d
Messages: 70
Registered: October 2008
Location: Tennessee |
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I find that logistics (size & strength of shelf; exposure to sunlight/pets/too-casual borrowers of books; family members and/or their possessions taking up long-term residence in key shelving areas) is the first factor. I don't mind it if the random used-book-store reading copies get a bit faded or thumbed through, but the signed first edition of Stardust is in a more secure location.
After that, I group them intuitively, then alphabetize with the group.* Other issues that regularly come up include:
If a book belongs to two or more categories, which category should I put it with?**
Should I put the DVD/audio-book/soundtrack with the novel?***
What if a book has multiple authors, or if the illustrator carries equal weight?****
How should one grouping transition to the next, especially if there are multiple possibilities?#
What about books in a series by various authors whom I collect individually?##
New additions (and/or new editions) can, of course, throw everything out of whack. And then there's my tendency to display### different groups on a rotating basis. It's not so much that I rearrange items as it is that the shelves constantly undergo book tectonics.
Oh, the 'Du Maurier-as-D-or-M' issue? My school library (pre-computer-inventory days) taught 'M'; same went for the Van & Van ders. 'Mc' and 'Mac' were treated as a letter preceding 'M', and then sub-alphabetized; so: Lawrence; McCormick; MacDonald; Moore. Other libraries opted to treat the 'de/di/du' and the 'Van/Van der/Von' variations as extra letters. I think it varied regionally, depending upon the ethnic population.
As the catalogues were digitalized, things went to strict character-by-character protocol. Typically a space takes precedence over 'A'.
--Dawn in TN
*I was a school library aide from 6th grade to 12th grade, then spent four years working in the college library. I alphabetize reflexively.
**E.g.: Brian Froud's The World of the Dark Crystal - part of the Jim Henson grouping or the artist grouping?
***Mirrormask; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
****Good Omens; Jan Brett's version of The Owl and the Pussycat
#Again, the Jim Henson grouping comes to mind: Fraggles, Farscape, Sesame Street, the craft books, criticisms, tie-ins...
##Terri Windling's Adult Fairy Tale series
###AKA 'merchandise' the items. Shortly after leaving the college library, I started a ten-year stint at bookstores. Merchandising is also a reflex.
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34949 is a reply to message #34938 ] |
Fri, 08 October 2010 00:54 |
jjmcgaffey
Messages: 52
Registered: September 2010
Location: Alameda, CA |
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I have little* problem with fiction - it's sorted by genre, pretty much, then alphabetized by author (primary author to _my_ mind, and a two-word last name starts with the first letter of the first word). There are a few that insist on crossing genres, but generally I can decide on a primary one. And sometimes I even start looking for it in that one, a few months later...
SF/F (I don't distinguish) is one entire wall of my bedroom. Plus boxes. Childrens, Adventure, and Humor are two-and-a-half shelves (these shelves are 9 ft long) in the living room, so is general and historical fiction (another shelf and a half). Animals (including dogs) and mysteries are in a Billy bookcase in the living room.
Then comes the non-fiction, and that's a pain. I don't have an intuitive setup for that. Broad subjects, yes - science in one area, music, cookbooks, computer books, crafts - oh yes, and graphic novels/comic strip books - but it's hard to separate geology from evolution from biology...and general cookbooks from baking from vegetables...and so on. That's the remaining 3 9-foot shelves plus 5 5-foot shelves in the living room, and the top of the dish cabinet in the kitchen. Plus boxes and stacks and...
*I was going to say no problem, and then started to think about the children's books that are SF, or the SF romances, or the....
[Updated on: Fri, 08 October 2010 00:55]
jjm
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34952 is a reply to message #34938 ] |
Fri, 08 October 2010 03:40 |
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Diane in MN
Messages: 2728
Registered: October 2008
Location: Twin Cities, MN, USA |
Senior Member |
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It would be lovely to have one room in the house big enough to be a real and self-contained library, but since that's not an option my books too live in different rooms. The room I appropriated for my book room (also where the ironing board lives, and the rack for drying hand laundry, and a dehumidifier) houses fiction. Fiction is all alphabetical, no separating out by genre. The bookshelves in the living room have general nonfiction. The bookshelves in the nice wide hallway have biography, some history, poetry, essays, and stuff from college and grad school. The cookbooks live on shelves in the kitchen. The dog books, gardening books, and how-to books have a set of shelves of their own, also in the nice wide hallway. Cartoon collections and such are on shelves in the TV room. Books I haven't read yet decorate various locations around the house. Audiobooks are in the cupboards below the living room bookshelves. I won't talk about magazines. 
my Encyclopaedia Britannica‡ and my Compact Oxford Dictionary.
My Compact OED does not live in a convenient spot. A few years ago I claimed a corner of the guest bedroom for my office, and I cherish the wish of replacing the guest bed with a sleep sofa and making room for a dictionary stand (and another small bookcase!) in here. Since that isn't likely to happen any time real soon, I am thinking about how else to get the OED up here. Alas, I do not have a Britannica. I had claimed my parents' set (not that my brothers were interested in it), but when the time came there was no room for it in my house. Literally (see above). It still annoys me to think of it.
I don't need a Third House, but one more room in this one would have been nice.
"The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough . . . " Louise Erdrich
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34954 is a reply to message #34938 ] |
Fri, 08 October 2010 03:51 |
CathyR
Messages: 574
Registered: July 2009
Location: NW England |
Senior Member |
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I love walls and walls covered with books - my favourite interior "decor". A whole room devoted to being a "library" would be just wonderful! My book collection doesn't even come close to some of these, and it's fascinating to read how you categorise your collections. For years, I had two major initial (rather snobbish) subdivisions - books that I wanted to buy and keep, and books that I would only borrow from the library or buy second hand for in-flight and holiday reading to be left in the hotel room on completion. Now that I have less time for reading, I only invest my ££ in books I really want to keep, and I always have between three and six waiting for my attention.
Then I have "downstairs" and "upstairs" books. Downstairs books are the quality ones filling the living room shelves, the most recent and the ones I want always in the main room of the house. The upstairs bookcases have the old, small, but treasured collections of classics, SF, and all the other miscellaneous titles. Even putting books in boxes in the loft seems like I'm betraying them somehow; even though it's years since I read any SF, for example, I remember that phase of my life, how much I enjoyed those authors at the time, and the books are still important to me. I don't want to hide them away.
Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34963 is a reply to message #34938 ] |
Fri, 08 October 2010 11:54 |
PamAdams
Messages: 248
Registered: May 2010 |
Senior Member |
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I kind of generally sort by author. Plus there's the library stack, the bedside stack, the read soon stack, and the as-ye-unopened Amazon box. I have had a book room, but will be changing due to a sister moving in. Of course, I have a room full of kitty boxes, so will possibly do some combining. I recently set up a favorites bookshelf in my bedroom- Bujold, Willis, McKinley (of course!), Kage Baker, etc., plus some odds and ends of stuff. One one shelf rests my Andy Adams westerns, the Maida books, the Girl Scout series, some of Robert Neill's historicals, and of course, Beautiful Joe, a great dog story about humane education. (I tell people it's like Black Beauty, but in reverse!)
Ooh- you mentioned Vicki Hearne. Now where did I put Adam's Task?
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34966 is a reply to message #34938 ] |
Fri, 08 October 2010 13:51 |
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3rdragon
Messages: 34
Registered: October 2010
Location: USA |
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I've alphabetized for forever. Since I only had a few feet of books and alphabetization was easy. I don't remember deciding to alphabetize, I was that young. But the library alphabetized, and the library (the Children's Fiction section, anyway) was what my little row of books aspired to, so of course I alphabetized. And I'm young enough, still, that I haven't collected much beyond fiction (and a couple of autobiographies and memoirs that are story-enough and that I like enough to shelve with fiction). I did give up, recently, on keeping my scattering of non-fiction on the little shelf with books I haven't read yet, so Non-Fiction I Had With Me At College is in the closet, and there's a collection of Classics You Read In School that I liked well enough to keep in the other closet with notebooks, plus the aforementioned books I haven't read yet and mostly-fiction. I guess there's also a pile of books that I've listed on paperbackswap and am still hoping people will take off my hands. That's in the closet, too, in piles by size.
I was lucky enough, a few years ago, to be able to commission a bookshelf from my grandfather for my birthday, and lucky that it still made sense in my room after we moved. So the great mass of mostly-fiction lives in alphabetized splendor on its shelf with a good inch of space above the taller hardcovers. As for everything else, there's not really enough to alphabetize; intuitive works just fine when you don't have more than 30 books in one place.
I do need to do something about my Webster's Third New International Dictionary, though. It belongs with the rest of the nonfiction, but that shelf is above my head, and because it's so big it's all the way on the end, behind the wall of the closet. And it's annoying enough to put it away that every time I take it down, it remains on my futon for a few weeks like an extra pillow before I summon the energy to hoist and persuade it back onto the shelf . . . but it's too big to fit on any of the other shelves, unless I want to lay it horizontally.
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34968 is a reply to message #34966 ] |
Fri, 08 October 2010 15:43 |
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cmarschner
Messages: 18
Registered: August 2010
Location: Ithaca, NY |
Junior Member |
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I usually shelve alphabetically within genre (within both fiction and non-fiction), when I have the books and the room for it, although my library is limited for the same reason as honeybee's. Right now most everything is in boxes in storage, and they're sorted by nonfiction, touchstone books (McKinley, McKillip, Stephenson, Emma Bull, Windling, a few Lackeys, etc), and other fiction. That way I can pull the right box when it's time to rotate the available-to-read books. The ones I'm re-reading live in my room with the field guides and library books. By my bedside are my current reads and the books I wish were current reads (McPhee, reading the landscape of New England - I *want* to be reading them, but they're so hard to pick up when there are wonderful touchstone books around).
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34969 is a reply to message #34952 ] |
Fri, 08 October 2010 15:51 |
Aaron
Messages: 319
Registered: June 2009
Location: California |
Senior Member |
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| Quote: |
my Compact Oxford Dictionary.
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My Compact Oxford is one of my secret shames, if I had any real fixity of purpose I would have the full sized edition. This would, of course, require an new bookshelf, which would require a new room, which would require a new house, which would have a bigger shop, which would have room for a forge, which I would have to learn to use, which would take time away from my reading, which I am already sadly neglecting; so I don't have a full sized edition, no matter how many times the OUP sends me discount offers.
I stick with the first edition of the digital OED precisely because it does not require the validation process.
[Updated on: Fri, 08 October 2010 15:53]
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34971 is a reply to message #34969 ] |
Fri, 08 October 2010 17:07 |
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AJLR
Messages: 2564
Registered: September 2008
Location: England, UK |
Senior Member
[Moderator] |
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| Aaron wrote on Fri, 08 October 2010 20:51 |
| Quote: |
my Compact Oxford Dictionary.
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My Compact Oxford is one of my secret shames, if I had any real fixity of purpose I would have the full sized edition. This would, of course, require an new bookshelf, which would require a new room, which would require a new house, which would have a bigger shop, which would have room for a forge, which I would have to learn to use, which would take time away from my reading, which I am already sadly neglecting; so I don't have a full sized edition, no matter how many times the OUP sends me discount offers.
I stick with the first edition of the digital OED precisely because it does not require the validation process.
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Goodness! Not a man for compromise in bookshelf settings I see.
"Never let a computer know you're in a hurry."
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34973 is a reply to message #34971 ] |
Fri, 08 October 2010 17:47 |
Aaron
Messages: 319
Registered: June 2009
Location: California |
Senior Member |
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| AJLR wrote on Fri, 08 October 2010 14:07 |
| Aaron wrote on Fri, 08 October 2010 20:51 |
| Quote: |
my Compact Oxford Dictionary.
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My Compact Oxford is one of my secret shames, if I had any real fixity of purpose I would have the full sized edition. This would, of course, require an new bookshelf, which would require a new room, which would require a new house, which would have a bigger shop, which would have room for a forge, which I would have to learn to use, which would take time away from my reading, which I am already sadly neglecting; so I don't have a full sized edition, no matter how many times the OUP sends me discount offers.
I stick with the first edition of the digital OED precisely because it does not require the validation process.
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Goodness! Not a man for compromise in bookshelf settings I see.
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Or perhaps a man with very few walls not yet covered with bookshelves. I will admit that centre of the living room is free of free standing bookshelves and that I have not started blocking up windows to produce more free wall space. The hall that has a free wall is rather narrow (I know that others have risen to this challenge) and I have a very nice Raven map of California that pretty much covers that wall. The maps that cover the walls in the study have been slowly covered by the advancing bookshelves. In defence of the art on the partial free wall in the living room I will point out that half of it is broadsheets for books, albeit in the case of the Henry Evans' California Native Wildflowers a book that was never published.
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34977 is a reply to message #34938 ] |
Fri, 08 October 2010 20:49 |
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I don't alphabetize. I did organize the shelves when I moved into my new place a month ago, but it's mostly like it was in the old place, lol. I sort by author mostly, and then by series (if there's a series) or usually by size if that's an issue. hardbacks might be seperate from paperbacks, but that depends on how much room I have on the given shelf and who else is on it.
suffice it to say I know where everything is
BlueRose - I'm itching to read so many of the books in that picture, lol! even though I can't really read what they are mostly...
[Updated on: Fri, 08 October 2010 20:50]
"they say that absence makes the heart grow fungus".
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34981 is a reply to message #34938 ] |
Fri, 08 October 2010 22:52 |
FerinyaGrace
Messages: 6
Registered: September 2010
Location: USA |
Junior Member |
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Wow, I work in a library so I should probably be ashamed by the way my books are shelved. When I married and moved in with my husband I put my books above the cabinets in the kitchen, mostly in sections that look good together. The older, antiquey ones are displayed on a set of bookshelves with other "pretty stuff"! It looks cool and was a great solution for a space/lack of shelves problem, but I do have to keep a step ladder in the kitchen
A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe. -Madeleine L'Engle
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34986 is a reply to message #34938 ] |
Sat, 09 October 2010 02:28 |
jjmcgaffey
Messages: 52
Registered: September 2010
Location: Alameda, CA |
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I have _my_very_own_ Compact OED - love it. I grew up with that edition, but my parents weren't going to let go of it - and it just happened to show up in a library booksale. Grab! I don't think I've ever seen a full edition (well, maybe in a library). I have a mobile Concise on my Android phone (and before that on my Palm) - I tried Shorter but it was three times the price of Concise and didn't seem to have much more info. I use that at least once a week; I seldom look at the Compact, because once I open it I'm gone for at least an hour...
jjm
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #34998 is a reply to message #34991 ] |
Sat, 09 October 2010 19:01 |
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| Honey_Bee wrote on Sun, 10 October 2010 04:46 |
We could play a riveting game of I-Spy with your shelf.
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remember that is the top half of one of two and it looks all different now.
If anyone wants to know about any of the books they arent familiar with, feel free to PM me, am happy to do a short review/summary/comparison.
Ooh that leads me to an idea - what if we started a "If you like X then you might like Y thread"?
IE if you liked Dragonhaven then you might like Lords of the Sky by Angus Wells
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #35002 is a reply to message #34938 ] |
Sat, 09 October 2010 22:53 |
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebluerose/
Have taken a new series of pix of my two bookcases, including closeups of 2 shelves at a time, so you can read the titles hopefully.
To view in more detail - it may only work if you have an active Flickr acct.
On any pic click on the image, and then a couple of buttons appear above it top left - click on Actions and then ALL Sizes.
Then click on the biggest size you want to view and you should see it in reasonable detail.
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #35007 is a reply to message #35006 ] |
Sat, 09 October 2010 23:49 |
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Should I put it in the Talk Forum or the PollyAnna Forum - mods?
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #35008 is a reply to message #35007 ] |
Sun, 10 October 2010 00:08 |
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| BlueRose wrote on Sat, 09 October 2010 23:49 |
Should I put it in the Talk Forum or the PollyAnna Forum - mods?
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As long as it's purely books, go ahead and put it in the book forum if you want! But either place is fine.
Smooshes!
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| Re: Books on Shelves [message #35207 is a reply to message #34986 ] |
Fri, 15 October 2010 05:07 |
rachel
Messages: 65
Registered: November 2008 |
Member |
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I have my parents' Compact OED, but my favourite dictionary is my Chambers. Oh, it's so lush, plus I have a 1959 version when I really want to explore my vocabulary (or lack of it).
Since I do cryptic crosswords, the Chambers migrates from the bed to the dining room table to the chair beside the bed to the floor to the shelf....
Rachel
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