Books

[jack]

I've been cataloguing my books. I'm about half way through, and have shelved:

~100 very good books, on bookcase #1.
~150 good books, temporarily boxed while waiting for a final count.
~75 books I don't really care about, but found interesting enough to keep.
~25 books I haven't read.
3 books I don't want at all. (1 Jenny Colgan, blame Jane, 1 random horror, 1 random thriller.)
4 books I don't own. (Same Jenny Colgan, 1 Umberto Eco long-term loaned from Grandfather, Tristan Shandy from Katherine, Mathematics of Financial Derivatives from Justin.)
10 not fiction and poetry, not including textbooks which are packed with notes.

Doubling gives about 700 total, about 500 which it would be nice to display. I have just about that much space if I set up the new bookcase and empty the oldest one.

I've been sorting books into very good and good, in my opinion, and within that shelved by author. I've kept some authors together, when I've generally liked or not been too bothered about them, but split up some's books when some I've really liked and some I really haven't.

Fortunately, I've no co-authored books where I can't decide where to put it. I've never liked an Pournelle or Barnes, so all those go under Niven. Good Omens goes under Pratchett because I've only got Neverwhere of Gaimen's.

I'm slightly scared there's so many, though nothing to how many some friends have. And pleased by how few I don't want.

I should have done more cleaning instead, but I'm pleased I did this. Maybe next I'll sort through the drawers of useless tat and get everything labeled up! :)

How does everyone else sort?

Comments

[gjm11.livejournal.com]

Fiction is alphabetical by author. Some other topics where we have a lot of books (science, mathematics, computing, philosophy) are grouped by topic and then alphabetical by author. (Conference proceedings etc. are alphabetical by editor but separated from monauthorial books.) Other things are grouped coarsely by topic ("theology", "music", "vaguely literary stuff that doesn't fit into any other category", "reference", etc.) and randomly scrambled intratopically. Pseudonyms are respected: Carroll, not Dodgson. Co-authored books are sorted by dominant author when there is one, and by alphabetically first author otherwise. Total book-count is circa 2500. The phrase "enough bookshelves" has no meaning.

I tried sorting CDs chromatically once; it worked quite well except that it drove my wife nuts. I think I tried the same with mathematics books once. I'm neither brave enough nor stupid enough to do it to all our books collectively.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I love the chromatic idea :)