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I went through a phase of trying to organise by colour because I thought it would look pretty, but it was deeply unsatisfying as colour has multiple variables so with a continuously changing hue you’d end up with varying brightness and the result didn’t look nearly as clean and elegant as I’d hoped.
Problem now resolved by giving all the books I’m never going to read again - which is almost all of them - to charity.
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I am a book hoarder, so I have given lots of thought to how to sort. And it basically contains elements of all of those (except colour)
1st division is by genre:
Then subdivided:
Fiction, Crime Fiction, Humour, Childrens, Culture,Travel literature, Politics/Sociology/Philosophy, Poetry, Foreign Language, Photography, Science, - all alphabetical by author
Art - Alphabetical by artist
Biography - Alphabetical by subject (I tried doing this chronologically by subject but abandoned it)
Sport - By sport, then alphabetically by author within that
History, - global histories first, then regional ones, then national ones, sorted chronologically within that. Then histories of specific things.
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Most of my books are in storage right now, but when I had them all on my shelves I preferred chaos to order, because organising them only exposed the dearth of titles in various subject areas. Or a surfeit ("oh, I see you have seven John Grishams and three non-fiction covering the entire continent of South America"). Also most of the books with years (Wisdens, Rothmans/Sky, travel guides) stop some time before this century and that just looks a bit sad.
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Books roughly by subject matter but also by size, ie height when on a shelf. But more of my books are stored away in boxes as I don't have the shelf space.
Ordnance Survey changed the orientation of text on the spines of one-inch maps in the 50s. That's very annoying from a storage point of view.
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- Aug 2008
- 25381
- The zero meridian
- Swansea, Gaziantepspor and the Zeugma Franchise
- Bahlsen Choco Leibniz Dark
I don't like my wife reading my books as she will break the spine and also use pen to underline things and as a book mark. I'm accused of being OCD about how I read my books, very carefully, no bending of the spine, a pencil if I want to underline or make notes and a bookmark or a piece of paper rather than turning down the corners.
As for arranging them, fiction and non fiction is the obvious starting point for me. Then paper and hard back are separate, I'll try to keep non fiction subjects together and fiction authors but that's really about it.
When we moved from Istanbul to the UK I got rid of about half my books, mostly the ones I'd read and would never read again but it was still painful to say goodbye to some of them.
Since having a child I've read very little and have been buying only bargains on Kindle, I hope one day to return to reading.
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Originally posted by Greenlander View PostThis took me an age to work out as I've just realised I tend to scan my bookshelves from right to left.
It still made sense either way as a sort of cut-up Beat poetry, so it's a win-win really.
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Incidentally, is there a similar national orientation schism in CD spines? Nearly all mine are the same way as my books, i.e. I tip my head to the right to read them. There are however the occasional ones that are the 'wrong' way round, even when in all other respects an utterly mainstream release – I think for instance the Verve's Urban Hymns is one such perpetrator.
I used to solve this by slotting the offending CD cases into the rack upside-down, but this always stressed me out slightly more than the wrong-way-round spines do for some reason, so now I tend to leave them the right way up and just put up with the spine writing facing the other way.
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I'm a spine breaker, although gradual rather than one brutal snap. I must have inherited the trait from my mother, she infuriates my father with the habit, but it is difficult to read the middle of a thick paperback without stretching it out a bit. It's not like it renders it unreadable.
My CDs are long gone, no regrets.
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Anyone who actively preserves spines is very, very weird. Spines break through the process of reading. If you're more concerned about the appearance of your book's spine than about reading the book then you're probably doing reading wrong. Do these people consciously have their books kind of only half-open when they're reading them just in case they risk damage to the spine?
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CDs do vary, though the existence of "national schools" doesn't seem to be as prevalent.
We have multiple French and German examples of each orientation. There may be more a tendency to ape books for releases thought to be purely for the domestic market. There are also some Anglo releases that buck convention just to be different.
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostThere is even variation within countries
Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View PostAnyone who actively preserves spines is very, very weird. Spines break through the process of reading. If you're more concerned about the appearance of your book's spine than about reading the book then you're probably doing reading wrong. Do these people consciously have their books kind of only half-open when they're reading them just in case they risk damage to the spine?
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Originally posted by pebblethefish View PostI take it we've all done that thing where we buy a book as a present for someone, but want to read it first, so try to read it without opening more than about 30 degrees so it looks brand new?
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- Mar 2008
- 9816
- Tyne 'n' Wear (emphasis on the 'n')
- Dundee Utd, Gladbach, Atleti, Napoli, New Orleans Saints, Elgin City
One lockdown challenge was cataloguing our books (used dictation so it was pretty quick) which threw up quite a few duplicates, lots of 'who knew we had this..?' and Ms F's lifelong desire to arrange them by colour- she loves those second-hand shops where all the orange penguin spines are together. I refused.
I separate fiction and non-fiction except in the Spanish and French language sections (downstairs hall and up in the loft, respectively) then roughly alphabetical by author, with some allowance for size and for leaving 'must remember to read that' spines showing, rather than at the ends where there's wooden facing in the way. Football and cycling have their own sections, separate from history, biog, politics etc
De facto there's a genre segregation as I'm a crime and sci-fi buff so there's a shelf or two in the upstairs hall of 'whatever shit you're going to read next' and a big case in the loft, out the road, of medium and long-term genre fiction prospects she'd never dream of opening.
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