On Sat, October 31, 2009 3:39 am, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> taking a cue from Chuck, let's have a special lbo-meme: how do you
> arrange your books?
Alphabetical by author. Long long ago, in distant land called college, I arranged my books by subject matter. But when I couldn't decide whether a book was feminism or philosophy or history it went on top. Eventually all of the books ended up on top. I then realize that what made alphabetical order so great was precisely that it was indifferent to contents -- that's what made it possible to give order. In a sense, the original "chinese encyclopedia" is the alphabet that makes encyclopedias possible.
I still have a fiction/non-fiction distinction though. That never gave me a similar classification problem -- the exceptions still seem relatively exceptional and don't wash away the borders.
There is also several hundred "books that I'm reading," which radiate away from my bedside (where I do all my reading), and the "to be filed" shelves of books I've bought and have yet to put in order which is embarrassingly large (over 1000).
Michael