Monday 28 September 2009

Shelfish git

Do you like Lucy Mangan? I do. OK, she's the guardian of middlebrow children's fiction in one weekly column, Building a Library, but she's often convinced me to buy things. She also married a Tory, which is outreach therapy a step too far for me, but she gets good material out of it. Her wedding anniversary article this week was particularly entertaining. In it, she explains how they celebrate their anniversary by reorganising her books.

I'm about to build bookcases and reshelve everything. At the moment, everything's alphabetical, except for biographies: if the subject is more famous than the author, it's filed under the subject's name.

We work for a while in silence. Eventually the room is mazed with books. "It looks like postwar Europe," he says as we unpack the final box. "Borders mean nothing any more, and everyone is looking to a higher authority to help them out. So… what kind of system are you planning on? Simple alphabetical order? Chronological within alphabetical? Maybe a moderated form of Dewey Decimal? I do most of mine by publisher, but then the colophon was my only childhood friend."

"None of the above," I say. "It goes 'Fiction', 'Non-fiction'. Read and unread within each of those. Within each 'unread' there will be 'Really want to read', 'Quite want to read', 'Not quite sure why I bought this' and 'Accidentally bought this twice – this is the spare.' Then a shelf for 'Lovely books' – that's my Folio Societies and my Persephones and occasional other volumes whose beauty trumps their read/unread status. And here, maybe on a special shelf all of its own, I'm going to put Bridget. And call it social history. OK?"

He turns puce, purple and finally white. A strangulated noise of acquiescence emerges and he sets to work in silence. I think I might have broken his spirit. This may be the best anniversary present ever.



























I'm toying with shelving by date of publication - which would give me a visual guide to literary history. Your thoughts, people?

11 comments:

Lou said...

Perhaps try reading (or watching perhaps as the soundtrack is great) High Fidelity for some inspiration.

Benjamin Judge said...

I have flirted with date order but you have to be pretty relaxed about the whole thing. Things like the correct order of Shakespeare plays, where to put collected works, what to do with books from the same year (do you painfully research exact puplication dates - how far back can you realistically do that) what about history books? subject or puplication (both are relevant)

Basically I couldn't cope with it all...

Benjamin. said...

Am I the only one who has no organization and only plausible consideration for the upkeep of the books? Also, the 'Unread' and 'Read' parts that Mangan notes, well surely you would remember which book you have read before and even if you have literally hundreds of books, the next read is usually far greater than the first.

What an exciting marriage those two have though, I mean.. forget marital relations, it's more of a case of... let's arrange some books, magazines and divorce within 10 years.

The Plashing Vole said...

I read High Fidelity when it came out and loved it. Saw the film with my sister - she kept nudging me and saying 'that's you', while I watched it with my head on one side so I could read the record spines. At the end, she said 'It's not you. He got the girl', which I thought was uncalled for…

Publication date is clearly a step too far then.

Ewarwoowar said...

I quite fancy Lucy Mangan.

Just throwing that one out there.

Kate said...

I would find publication date too complicated to order by in the first place, as Ben says, and then it would drive me mad if I was looking for a specific book as it'd probably take ages to find. If it were me (but it isn't, the vast majority of my books are in boxes in my Dad's garage - there's not enough space in our house!) a hierarchy of classification would make most sense - so firstly fiction and non fiction, then by theme (e.g. classics, modern classics sci fi etc, or history, geography etc - I'd have to put books such as 'history of wales' inbetween these two categories) then you do the sub-themes alphabetically - it may prove tricky to categorise some books (e.g. where would 'history of welsh culture' go?) but overall would be the easiest way to locate a specific book you want and also be user friendly for the casual browsing visitor. I'd also have to have a separate section for oversize books and especially pretty or treasured books (although Voley you can't put all books in this latter section!), and I'd have a set of shelves in the kitchen just for cookbooks.

Zoot Horn said...

Go for historical periods. Then you can mix fiction/ history/ cultural stuff but keep everything in a kind of order AND (the crucial bit) fit in books on top of/against other books in ways that optimise space considerations but keep eveything in some kind of sequence. With enormous categories (post-war fiction for eg)you can alphabeticise and/or order according to other criteria (American fiction, women's fiction, Afro-American fiction...)- anything more rigid is going to require more trips to IKEA.

The Plashing Vole said...

It's all so complicated! Perhaps I'll stick with alphabetical. Periodisation is OK - but what about modern books about an earlier period? Should science fiction go in the publication period or its setting (actually, that could be fun - I could have sections for 'billions of years in the future').

Cookbooks are definitely going in the kitchen. They need stains for credibility.

neal said...

Sort by colour.
You could have a rainbow effect across the wall, or even a mosaic style picture. Sure you won't be able to find anything, but it'll look amazing.

The Plashing Vole said...

Not a bad idea, Neal.
Ewar: agreed.

Jase said...

I'm really taken with the rainbow idea.

My initial response to publication was a silent scream in my head, but I quite like the idea of organising by date of the contents. Will probably give up and go for a variation on chronological within alphabetical though, because I'm a wuss!