Shelf reliance

This isn't even late summer yet, is it?  I should have taken the rush of joy I got from Readercon, and converted it into novel, and instead I'm trying to re-arrange my library in a heat wave.  Not without excuse:  several cataclysms (making room for my late mother's furniture) had left it in earthquake-level chaos, and it's been silting up ever since.   Some shelves have been inaccessible for years behind boxes and tables, inches deep in dust.

despatchel , bless him, came over last week and got me through Fiction A-F, on the strength of Reed's Extra Ginger on the rocks.  We came out of that looking like coal miners.

After that, I bought a dustbuster.  (Amazon happened to have their very highest rated Black & Decker on sale for two-thirds off, free next-day shipping.  It was a sign.)   But still ... Alphabetizing spices (or books) is classic procrastination.

Other than having about 20% more books than I have shelves for (and I haven't even unpacked all the boxes of more books from my mother's house, if I ever will), I have a taxonomy problem.  The collection is multi-focal, and clumps by association:  old beloved books, shiny new books that I must read now if I could find them, watches-of-the-night books, winter books with buttered toast, dear friends' books, books any civilised person must own, books I blush to acknowledge.

Arrangement is complex.  Do I intershelve the mysteries with the other fiction?  (When I want a mystery, I want a mystery.)  The SF?  The children's books?  But what about writers who work in several genres?  Do I shelve Tiptree's biography or Alan Garner's essays or Sylvia Townsend Warner's letters with their fiction?  Do I keep all the Ballantines together?  And what on earth am I to do with the 18 running feet of biography which I turfed out to make room for Fiction G through part of M?  For now, leave it.  I've rediscovered Kenneth Clark's witty self-portrait with donors, Another Part of the Wood.

Tell me about your libraries.

Nine