flambingo

domestic taxonomies

at long last I am tackling the bookshelves. i need more room and i can't find anything, books have just been shoved into and space and nothing makes sense. but how to organise them?

its a nightmare, not least that the cat is markedly unkeen on any kind of change, particularly anything that smacks of moving house, so has been pushing over my carefully made piles before retreating to her den in the airing cupboard.

i'm reduced to sorting like an overcrowded dinner party. who would gore vidal like to sit next to (he gets edmund white), why have flan O’Brien, Borges and Ian Sinclair ended up together? does classical writing mean that plays poetry and criticism all go together but philosophy has to go hang out on a different shelf eyeing Foucault with distain? or would it all be much more comfortable next to ancient history? which leaves Melville the choice of 'star of the sea' (whaling / cannibalism), 'master and commander' (boys own seafaring) or palhunick (americana) for neighbours. or some strange cannibal-americana-whaling-seafaring category all of their own?

I end up with the basic point of bookshelves, storing and retrieving books. books most frequently read on the most accessible shelves. but 'did I see that recently' as the main referent has been the cause of the current chaos. well actually the immediate chaos - several hundred books in precarious towers or mudslides across the whole of the sitting room is the attempt to solve the most recent chaos. And it would probably help if I didn’t keep finding things I had been looking for and having a quick read.

I knew someone who organised their books by spine colour, not a bad system, normally while searching for a book start with 'did I read it recently' before moving on to 'what colour is it'. another who organised by size. I tried this but having 'bread and jam for frances' mixed up with an 'for an anti-authoritarian insurrectionist international' helps no-one.

so so far i have: ancient, medieval and classical lit (subsuming poetry, plays and critical theory), pre-19th british, pre-19th european, 19th cent british, 19th cent american, 19th cent european. 20th cent european and international, americana, contemporary british and commonwealth, poetry (excluding classical and medieval), travel (20th cent - excepting travel properly belonging to politics or history). and that’s before the real test of will non-fiction.

I feel like peter kien. Its not a good feeling.