After trolling the notes from Piper’s Book Was There and adding a number of books to my TBR list, I also got ahold of an article, “Falling Asleep over the History of the Book” by Seth Lerer (PMLA, Vol. 121, No. 1, Jan 2006, p 229-234) thinking it was about reading in bed. Reading in bed is mentioned at the very end of the article but nothing especially interesting or important is said about it. The article is really just an introduction to a special issue of PMLA on the history of the book. Talk about disappointing.
There were a couple interesting thoughts/ideas/questions in the piece though like this on the literary canon:
Books are objects, though, and canonization is as much a process of selecting space as of selecting value. How can we fit the range of literature on the shelf? The physical, artifactual nature of the book has made the canonizing of the literary work into an act of space management. I think it is worth pausing over this suggestion to provide another lens for […] thinking about the past and future of the book.
Can I just say that librarianship has been, and is, all over the space management thing? And not just for literature but for all other disciplines too. Lerer does go on to mention libraries but but not so much in relation to what he said above. He discusses libraries in terms of cataloging and points out the Cambridge University Library organizes books in part by size, the Marzian Library in Venice by date of acquisition, and Robert Cotton, a 17th c book collector organized his books by ancient emperors. Lerer wonders briefly how we arrange our books affects not only the way we see and find them as objects, but the way we read them and view literature in general. It’s a much better thing to wonder about than how shelf space affects canonization.
I read many years ago about a famous library in Europe that was once the personal library of, I believe, an author. He had his shelves and shelves of books organized by association and sometimes how the book was related to its neighbor wasn’t clear until you read the book. The last book on the last shelf supposedly referred back to the first book on the first shelf. How I wish I could remember more about this library because it was really fascinating. Maybe someone out there knows about it?
Anyway, I can see how shelving books like in the unknown library can affect how we see and read each book. But I doubt many people shelve their books like that. Think about the way you shelve your books. Mine are alphabetical more or less and broken out into different categories — fiction and nonfiction, poetry, classic fiction, books about books, reference books, etc. Then the TBR books are pretty much a wild jumble. My system helps me find my books when I want them, most of the time, but how does it affect the way I see literature? It’s a rather conventional system, does that mean I have a conventional idea of reading and literature’s possibilities? Or does it simply reflect that I value being able to easily locate my books over what a more creative arrangement might impart? Or maybe it is all bunk and means absolutely nothing.
I just don’t know. While I acknowledge a creative arrangement might provide extra bookish insight, I don’t want to be relegated to the conventional and uncreative heap because of the way I shelve my books. Therefore I’m leaning toward it not making that much difference how books are organized in my personal library.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
My physical library has always been organized roughly by association/topic, and by author for a few selected authors that I have a lot of and/or really love. I can’t do alphabetical because half the time I can’t remember the exact name of a book, or who wrote it…
I’m sure other people have a terrible time with my organization, but I always have an idea roughly where the book I want is physically on the shelves, and roughly what color the spine is, so it usually doesn’t take me too long, even if I haven’t picked up the book in years. In fact, I have a terrible time with my ebook collection because I don’t have the physical and visual cues to help me. I have to rely on the search function.
Physical TBR books are piled on the shelf of my bedside table, so they are easy to find. Electronic TBR books get a bit lost in the shuffle.
My books are arranged by time frame: Ancients, Medieval, Renaissance, Early Modern, Modern, Contemporary. History and literature are grouped together. Reference books have their own section. TBR and completed are together. It took me years to come up with this scheme, but now I can’t imagine anything else. Even my Kindle follows this arrangement, with books grouped in “collections” that have the same labels.
My fiction books are arranged first of all by gender, all the female writers and then the men. Within that it’s alphabetical. The non-fiction is mostly by topic, although because of the physical nature of those books and the different sizes of my shelves that tends to be rather patchy. But, shelving is definitely an issue- mainly because there is just never enough of it.
I tend to keep books that mean a lot to me or are particularly useful where I can find them…and that leaves the rest!
My library is sorted by association. But it isn’t nearly as awesome of a system as the one you mentioned – I want to read more about that guy.
I’ve always thought it LOOKS great when books are arranged by color, but in truth my books are seldom arranged in any order at all, except this sort of Byzantine structure only accessible in my head. I have a very large collection of old children’s books, and they aren’t really in any order except that they are grouped together (and I always keep certain books on the same shelves together; not sure why except they “belong together”). My art books are together, and my travel books as well. The fiction is sort of arranged loosely together but with no real order within that group. So I guess I have large categories with no discernable order within the category. I think I like to be surprised… I go “shopping” for a book on my shelf and since I have no idea where it will be, I end up scanning most of the shelves and that reminds me of what I have. I do that with other things as well: clothing, cookbooks, photo files. I am forced to do periodic scans and that keeps things fresh in my mind. Otherwise I would forget about 85% of what I own. Now that I’m thinking about it, I do that with travel directions as well: I try to take different routes, or I deliberately “get lost” — because otherwise how will I know what’s out there?
I am a professional historian, and the way I organize books is directly related to how I process information: within each category (the biggest ones are fiction at home and work books, which are at my work office) I arrange books first geographically and then chronologically by publication date. So my fiction is arranged into sections of English, Western European, Russian and Eastern European, North American, Far East Asian, and African/Middle Eastern literature, and within them by date of publication. I know this is directly related to the fact that I think and read in terms of both geography and chronology, which is related to my training as an academic historian.
My fiction books are a complete hodgepodge and I only try and keep books by the same author together. My classics are alphabetical, though (sort of). Otherwise nonfiction is by subject matter, but again a hodgepodge within that subject. And that’s sort of how my reading is, too. All over the place. I might read a book by an author, like it so much and then decide to read more, same with nonfiction–reading about a particular subject several books in a row. I wonder what it says about a reader who organizes by the color on the spine of a book! Sounds like the article at least has asked some interesting questions–though you’re right–it doesn’t say so much about the literature in the Canon.
I put books of similar size together, since I find that is how they stack together more efficiently in terms of space. So whilst I have a number of books by Dickens of different size, they are in different places because they are all different sizes. So one Dickens may be next to a non-fiction book, and there may be two Dickens together in another spot. I do think in terms of how to use space efficiently.
Each shelf is alphabetical but the cases are not. Each shelf’s books are of similar size although all books by one author are always together. My TBR books are not separated from the “general population.” This is how I find books are most easily found. That said, there are three special shelves — two in in which my favourite Victorians and Renaissance writers are mixed in together and one which is devoted entirely to Anthony Trollope.
I don’t think organization says much except about what one wants it to say. I want mine to say, “Colleen, here I am! READ ME.”
Ha, it’s true the UL in Cambridge is organised partly by size – I’m so used to it, I hadn’t thought about it. So I suppose my sense is that we organise our books in the way that means we expend minimal thought in finding them, precisely so we can forget about the organisation.
I once visited a home that had books on shelves in all the different rooms organized by color. i.e. red books in the red room, blue books in the blue room, etc. so the books were more of a decorative accessory. Weird, but it actually looked pretty cool.
My thoughts are this: “While I acknowledge a creative arrangement might provide extra bookish insight, I don’t want to be relegated to the conventional and uncreative heap because of the way I shelve my books. Therefore I’m leaning toward it not making that much difference how books are organized in my personal library.” LOL!
What more can I add? I’m a librarian. I value being able to find my books. I find choosing the category for some a bit tricky but into a category and shelved alphabetically it must go. I like having my books in a spreadsheet so I can sort on other things – author (across categories), publisher, year of publication, my classification, etc.
I think colour coding looks cool, but it would drive me batty trying to find the books unless I installed an RFID or somesuch system!
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I normally have a system that is more or less only discernible to me – ancient history to current, various groupings of interest, fiction more or less genre and alphabetical – but the books I moved into the new bedroom and arranged by color is my favorite. Not that I can find anything quickly all that often, mind you! But over the monts, I can put hands on a title faster and the books themselves are quietly sorting themselves out by shade, size, compatibility.
Somehow I missed this post when it first arrived. We have put our house on the market – and a person is hired by the realtor to ‘stage’ the house. That is, to walk through the house and tell you what needs to be rearranged, taken out of the house, etc. to make it seem bigger and more spacious. We have one wall of book shelves in our study. The stager said I needed to arrange the books by color! All the white spines together, the red spines, etc. So that the shelves didn’t look so busy. It would break my heart to rearrange books that don’t belong together in any other way, by color, just to be decorative. We didn’t move the books and the house sold in one day – so guess we did alright. Thought you’d be interested in this idea for arranging books!!