Book Buying Addicts Anonymous discussion
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Organization and rearranging
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Glad someone else shares my need to rearrange books. I realized the last time I did it that reorganizing my library is the equivalent of other people constantly rearranging their furniture, which I always thought was weird. My books are currently arranged roughly by publication date and then genre (fiction, nonfiction, children's). But that might change the next time I feel the need to move things around.
Ashley *Hufflepuff Kitten* wrote: "I find rearranging my books to be a combination of stressful and therapeutic, but then again I've only got in the 700-ish neighborhood. Can't imagine how Joseph feels. I tend to organize my books..."
Sounds awesome Ashley. It's fun rearranging them sometimes, although I'm pretty happy with how I have mine right now.
You and me both, Outlaw. But I'm afraid that I would also need a bigger house to accommodate those shelves. I think I'm almost out of room.
Mod
Nah, you just need to get rid of some of that unneeded furniture, like the living room sofa or your dining room table maybe even your bed, you could always just sleep on the floor, right? ;-) I shouldn't tease, though. The primary thing I was looking for when I bought my house was whether it had enough space for my books, and believe it or not, that was about 2500 books ago. :-)
I have five full-size bookcases, a smaller one stacked on top of one of the big ones, then six built-in bookshelves (3 on either side of the fireplace -- technically there are four but if I use the bottom-most ones, the cats murder the books). Have you guys seen those invisible shelves that screw into the wall? Really cool.
After years of being warned, scolded, and threatened by my wife to reduce my collection of books, I've finally promised to take action. When our children left the nest, I was awarded one of their bedrooms for a REAL library. Prior to their planned departure, I would hamster my treasures away wherever I could find space. Now, with an entire room (bookshelves from floor to ceiling), I had more than enough room to expand......and expand I did! Free-standing shelves were installed, filling up a majority of the floor space, and I continued to buy, buy, buy books. When the shelves were filled I reverted to my old tactic of hiding them away. I must admit that my wife does all the cleaning, and is very good at it. Slowly but surely she created space for me to store my extended library and I continued to add to it. Without forethought, I stumble upon a new book. I wouldn't even know I wanted it but upon seeing it, I can't walk away. When asked by my wife if I have read all the books I've saved, I had to admit that I hadn't. With a collection of books that could impress any small town library (not to mention ten thousand + books in Kindle Cloud), I finally struck a deal with the devil and love of my life, agreeing to read and eliminate some books, thus reducing the hoard. It is hard and painful work, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
Thom wrote: "After years of being warned, scolded, and threatened by my wife to reduce my collection of books, I've finally promised to take action. When our children left the nest, I was awarded one of their b..."Thom your posts are the best! It is so true about the painful work of reducing the hoard of books!
My wife was cool with the book buying at the beginningShe eventually started giving me a hard time. Eventually she stopped.
What I have found as I have gotten older is I don't buy as much books as I did when I was twenty. I was telling my youngest I would drop $100 bucks easy on payday. These days I rarely walk out of a book store with an actual book mostly because nothing interests me
I was almost in Thom's position, my 20 yr old Daughter moved out and I started eyeing her room to stash my books. Unfortunately she moved back a month later. So my read books are still in boxes and unread are in the living room on shelves
I used to take great joy in rearranging my books when I bought new ones or shelves. I enjoyed visiting all of the books I had ready to read at a moment's notice. Alphabetizing or making sure each series I have is in order or that my shelves were just so. But I've found that even the thought of rearranging my books feels exhausting and daunting, which is why I have new things I've acquired all over my house. I'm not sure why I lost the joy in this activity maybe it's like a reading slump and one day I will work my way out of it.
I was a student librarian at both of my old schools, my dad works for the library service and both of us have the same pet peeve which is books messed up on a shelf as well as a pile of them fallen onto the floor. This has happened to both myself and him on purpose. I own around 650-700 books and getting my room re-done next week. My plan is to keep books by the same author together and spilt them into genres (Fantasy, Contemporary etc). :)
I try to keep authors together as much as possible so I'm not running around thinking I'm missing one of their books somewhere, but here's a small current issue: my historical fiction collection fills three shelves. Of those, WWII has probably a half-shelf of its own, and includes John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I've got another Boyne book, Crippen, on the shelf below, and it irks me that they're apart but I also know it would bother me to have them side by side. *flails*
Mod
I know what you mean. I generally group my books by genre and then alphabetically by author. I like to keep an author's works together, but when they write different genres I do split them up. Also, when an author uses several different pseudonyms but still writes the same genre, I like to keep all of those together under the author's true name. For example, I have all of Jayne Castle's futuristic romances and Amanda Quick's historical romances kept in the K's with Jayne Ann Krentz's contemporary romances. And when multiple authors write a series, I shelve those under the name of the series.
I organize alphabetically by author. I only reorganize when I get extra much needed space.
My bookshelves are of a cheaper build so every 6 months I have to take the books off and flip the board of the shelf over to keep them from bowing. I don't usually rearrange them then unless i find that I have new books that need to go on that shelf and books need to be shuffled. Storage in my house if limited so now that my son has joined the Navy his room is the guest room/excercise/office space/storage space for books in boxes. I am working out a way of adding shelves in my room, the wasted space at the end of the hallway and my son's room to be able to shelf more books. I currently have them in plastic tubs, stacked behind doors, shoved in boxes and everywhere I see room that no one is using.
My daughter keeps telling me to stop buying books since I haven't read all of the ones I have, but I very patiently explained that I was working on having a first class library to enjoy when I retired in 20+ years and a person just can't pass up a good book sale!
I have a purpose built summer house at the bottom of my garden for my books, I tend to organise them by genre (and the covers by colour in the genre - eek!). However I am now running out of room in the shelves and I am stacking them on the floor and on the furniture. I too am building up the collection ready for retirement, but I also have to say that many years ago I sold a lot of my books as I was moving to a smaller home and I deeply regretted it when I moved into a bigger home again - so now I am buying back books to replace the ones I sold! I also have a reinforced shelf in the kitchen for my cook books and a bookcase out of direct sunlight in the hall for my posh books, plus a few in the lounge (to co-ordinate with the décor). In my view a house is not a home without books.
I'll tell you a secret about retirement. One of the pleasures is buying more books that will not fit in your bookcases and unless you live forever you will never read them all but you keep buying those lovely books anyway. No excuses necessary because I can do any darn thing I want and I will always want more books. ;-)
I would like to start cataloging my books somehow. I think I may have to start with Goodreads books shelves to get an idea of how I want to do it. I would like a nice binder with the books listed with a general idea of what it is, so when I am looking for a specific type of book (space travel, goes back in time, Victorian) I can go to the catalogue instead of the long way I do it now.
That may need to happen after I get the painting and shelves installed as I am putting them up. It will be a big project.
I use a leather A5 Filofax, lists by subject for non-fiction and fiction listed in alphabetical order (author's surname) with some authors getting their own page, I use coloured paper to list audio books. I recommend a nice Filofax as if you want to change your indexing all you need to do is buy more paper and dividers, it's very adaptable and, of course you can get some really nice Filofax folders. It is nicer to have the paper version rather than a computer saved list for some reason, paper, books, bibliophiles, definitely a pattern here!
I use a piece of software called Readerware. It has versions for books, video and music and I use all three. The software uses database software, but includes pictures for book covers, etc. I has up to three categories for books so you can classify a book as Science Fiction, Action-Adventure,Military for example. I finally had to pay an upgrade fee not that they have version 4 in Beta, but my original purchase was over ten years ago and they kept me up to date with no additional charges. Also has versions for Smartphones that are free if you already have the computer version installed.
I tend to organize my books by genre, and usually I only have to rearrange things when I get new books in -- squeezing them onto already-full shelves can be a pain, so then it's time to get creative.
I did get to do a larger reorganization a few months ago when my SO took the decorative facade off the top of 3 shelves and added a board to make that a full-length shelf of its own. Being able to put books up there opened up at least two shelves, which was fantastic.
And last night I moved a few things to create a new reference shelf, intended specifically for books I use for research on the novels I'm writing.