Of books and bookshelves ...

[The Last Conformist]

I'm rearranging my bookshelves, with the twin and mutually antagonistic goals of getting the books sorted in a more rational order - it's gone to far when books in the same series are found in different sections - and trying to cram in more books. I'm having decent luck, except I'm ending up with this pile of old magazines I'll have to stash somewhere else ...

So, I was wondering how the local bibliophiles sort their books. By subject? By size? Alphabetically by author? By language?

Myself, I sort mine by subject matter, and within each subject I usually keep books of the same author together, but I don't alphabetize authors.

 

[Rambuchan]

By subject: novels together, short stories togther, plays together. Then political writings, philosophy, history, in separate sections, but close together. And so on. Subject seems to make more sense than any other for me.

 

[thetrooper]

Fiction: by author.
'Facts': by subject.

And I separate 'facts' and fiction.

 

[bhsup]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_decimal

 

[Abaddon]

Jam em all where they fit.. not enough books to really begin categorising.. i guess i lump authors together

 

[The Last Conformist]

Also, do you have any special bibliophile treasures you're proud of?

The niftiest thing on my bookshelves is a a copy of Knut Lundmark's Nya himlar from the first, numbered, printing of 500. It should net some hundreds of dollars at an antiquarian's, if I could bear to part with it.

 

[Rambuchan]

I have First Editions of Kipling's "Kim", "The Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book". Never had them valued. They shall be passed on, just like I received them.

I've also got some pretty old copies of "War & Peace" (doubt they are worth much though, they're just 'old'), some signed works signed by some good, but not famous authors, plus many works written by family members which have a value money doesn't relate to.

 

[Eli]

Roughly by subject, but with a lot of exceptions. Also, the books I like less naturally find their way to the second rows.

BTW, do you have any idea how to get rid of the smell? The used and old ones are supposed to stink, but most of my books were bought new in the last 5 years and they also stink. What do I do?

 

[Che Guava]

Fiction: by author.
'Facts': by subject.

And I separate 'facts' and fiction.

I second that! Its only failing is that I'm never sure where to put the Hunter Thompson books l have..

 

[Rambuchan]

I'm never sure where to put the Hunter Thompson books l have..

Why in the journalism section of course. That's a fact section. [EDIT: Unless you mean his novels.]

Eli: I love the smell of old books. Is that what they smell of, or something else?

 

[The Last Conformist]

My books have now been forcibly squeezed into the categories of Speculative Fiction, Other Fiction, History, Popsci, Religion, Lexicography, Youth Literature, Textbooks & Science, and Stuff That Defies Categorization.

 

[Che Guava]

Why in the journalism section of course. That's a fact section. [EDIT: Unless you mean his novels.]

His journalism ones seem a bit fiction-ny at times, so its not always clear-cut. Fear and Loathing, for eg: I have heard Thompson claim it as both fact and fiction, and to tell you the truth, I don't think even he remembers....

Eli: I love the smell of old books. Is that what they smell of, or something else?

My g.f. works at a univefrsity library in the acquisitions dept. I can always tell when she gets books from india because they reek of some anti-fungal chemical....

 

[Erik Mesoy]

I stuff my books everywhere and group sequels/series together. I can usually find any book in ten seconds, simply because I'm the one who organized my bookshelves and I read all the books so often. Other people have spent ten-fifteen minutes failing to find a book at eye level.
I have too many books.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I stuff my books everywhere and group sequels/series together. I can usually find any book in ten seconds, simply because I'm the one who organized my bookshelves and I read all the books so often. Other people have spent ten-fifteen minutes failing to find a book at eye level.
I have too many books.

I suppose that, to me, systematicizing your book collection is more of a kind of Feng Shui than a pragmatic means to find your books. I don't organize them because I need it to locate them, I organize them because it feels good to have my books organized.

 

[Steph]

The oldest book I have in an Astronomy treaty dated 1870.

 

[Rambuchan]

His journalism ones seem a bit fiction-ny at times, so its not always clear-cut. Fear and Loathing, for eg: I have heard Thompson claim it as both fact and fiction, and to tell you the truth, I don't think even he remembers....

It was factual enough for Time Magazine, The Nation, Rolling Stone etc to keep hiring him as a journalist.

Oh and I thought I would dig out this about Gonzo journalism in connection...

The term gonzo was first applied to Thompson's writing in 1970 by Bill Cardoso, a Boston Globe reporter who claimed the word had originated with the Irish in South Boston to describe the last man standing at the end of an all-night drinking marathon.

Gonzo journalism argues that journalism can be truthful without striving for objectivity. It favours style over accuracy and aims to describe personal experiences or the essence or mood of things rather than facts. It disregards the 'Polished' edited product favoured by Newspaper Media and strives for the gritty factor.

Gonzo journalism extends the New Journalism championed by Tom Wolfe, Lester Bangs, and George Plimpton. "I don't get any satisfaction out of the old traditional journalist's view—'I just covered the story. I just gave it a balanced view,'" Thompson said in an interview for the online edition of The Atlantic. "Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. You can't be objective about Nixon."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_journalism

I tend to agree with old HST and as one obituary put it: "When the dust and madness settled after the 60s, it soon seemed clear to us that HST's paranoid, drug fuelled voice was in fact one of the most lucid and consistent throughout the whole period".

My g.f. works at a univefrsity library in the acquisitions dept. I can always tell when she gets books from india because they reek of some anti-fungal chemical....

Everything from India reeks of something or other. Strangely, books smell just like many clothes. Is it mothballs?

TLC: Congrats!

 

[IglooDame]

I suppose that, to me, systematicizing your book collection is more of a kind of Feng Shui than a pragmatic means to find your books. I don't organize them because I need it to locate them, I organize them because it feels good to have my books organized.

Well there you go then.

My books are currently organized in boxes according to how well they fit in the boxes. One of these days I'll be unpacking them, at which point they'll be on the shelves with authors/series grouped together (Heinlein has his own shelf, and a few others cover quite a space too) and overall roughly in scifi/navy/politics/computers/etc divisions.

 

[Che Guava]

It was factual enough for Time Magazine, The Nation, Rolling Stone etc to keep hiring him as a journalist.

Oh, I have no doubt in my mind that he was a journalist, I think he just stretched the term enough so that it fell somewhere between fact and fiction, somewhere closer to a personal truth than a universal one.
Why did he have to go and blow his head off...?

Everything from India reeks of something or other. Strangely, books smell just like many clothes. Is it mothballs?

Probably. It smells like permanent marker and feces....

 

[Eli]

Eli: I love the smell of old books. Is that what they smell of, or something else?

Yeah. It's that old book smell and I just cant stand it. The problem is that my new books smell that way too, even though they're in a great condition. I think the few old books I have infected all the rest with their smell.

I used to keep them on open shelves but then decided that the high moisture is the cause of the smell problems, so I tucked them into shelves closed by glass. Now they stink even harder because there is no ventilation.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

I gave up trying to keep my bookshelves in order decades ago. Id have to hire somebody.