Musing: books - My armies

[wilderthan]

wilderthan: More book organisations, today. Think of this in terms of troop organisations in an army. I am such a dork.
first_seventhe: You do have quite the army of books. One of these mornings you're going to wake up and they will have invaded your bed.
wilderthan: And I will cuddle with them.

So, despite reorganising my books when I posted the first set of pictures here, something was bugging me. Really, really bugging me.

(Warning: Below the LJ cuts you will find a lot of images, and a section of purple prose to laugh at.)



This is how my shelves were. I'm sure you can see what's unsatisfactory: messy genres. I had big vague lumps of genre. I decided that I'd have to come up with a better solution.



This was my first idea. Abolishing genre seemed like the best plan, with so few shelves. This idea seemed good to me, with ABC the highest and XYZ the lowest, and feywood agreed. She's an awesome fiancée, never bothered even when I start making diagrams in Paint about how to do something as mundane as organise my bookshelves. You can see why she's a keeper, yes?

But, talking to her, I had another thought, resulting in this.



This appealed because it's sort of like a book. Start at the top on the left, go down... no?

Anyway, I went with the first option because it seemed the more natural. To see it fully and zoom in and whatever, go here.



I also did a rotation, in which I took as many of my Stephen King books as necessary off the shelves to get all the other authors on. I did have to take away some poetry as well, but I left a representative book by each poet -- e.g. Tennyson's Collected Works are now tucked away, but Idylls of the King is still there. And there's still some Stephen King on my shelves, too! This way, I figure, it keeps most of my books in sight. You know the saying, "out of sight, out of mind"...

And then, prompted by my success, I organised my ebook collection.



Better view here. Basically just tidied up all the filenames and made them "author name, title". You wouldn't believe some of the free ebooks I have. The purple prose is astounding. I present to you the first two paragraphs of Tax Fries' A Spider Ballet.

Sunshine. An affectionate smile from a benevolent guardian nurturing a distant ward, and exacting a tribute from the denizens of the garden befitting a glorious deity. Golden sunflowers, towering and statuesque, reached up into the clear blue sky as if aspiring to kiss the scintillating orb ahead of the more modest and dissembling roses. These demure flowers were content to bathe their striking beauty in the cascade of warmth and light from the fiery god in the sky.
In the firmament surrounding the flowers, a swarm of honeybees danced with frenzied joy on this bright afternoon; driven by the engine of life to an orgiastic display of aerobatic skill and prowess. Soaring, spinning, looping and diving with power, grace, agility, and daredevil disregard for gravity or each other as they sought, through open competition, to impress and gain favour among the watching flowers.

Yeah. 'nuff said.

Anyway, then I got really, really adventurous, and decided to look through my ebooks and figure out what I really want to read of those, and what I have hanging around just to laugh at.

The List
(Books with asterisks are rereads, books in brackets are ebooks.)

Anonymous, The Death of King Arthur. (Translator: James Cable.)
Anonymous, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (Translator: Brian Stone.)
Anonymous, Beowulf. (Translator: Seamus Heaney.)*
Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride.
Margaret Atwood, Bodily Harm.
Neal Asher, Gridlinked.
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park.
Jane Austen, Emma.
Jane Austen, Persuasion.
Jane Austen, Lady Susan.
Isaac Asimov, Foundation.
Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire.
Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation.
Isaac Asimov, The Stars, Like Dust.
Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun.
Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games.
Charlotte Brontë, Villette.
Chris Bunch, Storm of Wings.
Chris Bunch, Knighthood of the Dragon.
Chris Bunch, The Last Battle.
(Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot.)
(Jason K. Chapman, The Heretic.)
Collection, Book of Dreams.
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White.
(Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio.)
Joseph Conrad, Nostromo.
Bernard Cornwell, The Sea Lord.
Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves.
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy.*
Charles Dickens, A Tale Of Two Cities.
(Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.)
(Cory Doctorow, Little Brother.)
(Cory Doctorow, Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom.)
Stephen Donaldson, Lord Foul's Bane.
Stephen Donaldson, The Illearth War.
Stephen Donaldson, The Power That Preserves.
Stephen Donaldson, The Wounded Land.
Stephen Donaldson, The One Tree.
Stephen Donaldson, White Gold Wielder.
(Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World.)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Karamazov Brothers.
(Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo.)
Graham Edwards, Dragoncharm.
Graham Edwards, Dragonstorm.
Graham Edwards, Dragonflame.
Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter.
George Eliot, Middlemarch.
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night.
John Fowles, The Collector.
Mary Gentle, 1610: Sundial in a Grave.
Margaret George, Helen of Troy.
Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra.
Margaret George, The Autobiography of Henry VIII.
Robert Graves, I, Claudius.
Robert Graves, Claudius the God.
Jane Griffiths, Icarus on Earth.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.
Tanya Huff, Blood Price.
Tanya Huff, Blood Trail.
Tanya Huff, Blood Lines.
Tanya Huff, Blood Pact.
Tanya Huff, Blood Debt.
Tanya Huff, Blood Bank.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
Henry James, Portrait of a Lady.
James Joyce, Ulysses.
H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
Diana Wynne Jones, Castle in the Air.*
Diana Wynne Jones, House of Many Ways.
Guy Gavriel Kay, The Summer Tree.*
Guy Gavriel Kay, The Wandering Fire.*
Guy Gavriel Kay, The Darkest Road.*
Jack Kerouac, On the Road.
Stephen King, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.
Stephen King, The Dead Zone.
Stephen King, Christine.
Stephen King, Gerald's Game.
Stephen King, Needful Things.
Stephen King, Desperation.
Stephen King, Rose Madder.
Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three.
Stephen King, The Waste Lands.
Stephen King, Wizard and Glass.
Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla.
Stephen King, Song for Susannah.
Stephen King, The Dark Tower.
Stephen King, Misery.
Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis.
Stephen King, Dolores Claiborne.
Stephen King, The Dark Half.
Stephen King, Lisey's Story.
Stephen King, Different Seasons.
Stephen King, Danse Macabre.
Stephen King, Cujo.
Stephen King, The Tommyknockers.
Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book.
Ellen Kushner, Thomas the Rhymer.
Ellen Kushner & Delia Sherman, The Fall of the Kings.
Stephen Lawhead, Taliesin.
Stephen Lawhead, Merlin.
Stephen Lawhead, Arthur.
Stephen Lawhead, Pendragon.
Stephen Lawhead, Grail.
Stephen Lawhead, Avalon.
Stephen Lawhead, Byzantium.
Stephen Lawhead, The Search for Fierra.
Stephen Lawhead, The Siege of Dome.
Ursula Le Guin, Always Coming Home.
Ursula Le Guin, The Eye of the Heron.
Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera.
(G. R. R. Martin & Lisa Tuttle, Windhaven.)
Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn.
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca.
Ian McEwan, Atonement.
Maureen F. McHugh, China Mountain Zhang.
Robin McKinley, Sunshine.*
Robin McKinley, Deerskin.
Robin McKinley, Spindle's End.
China Miéville, The Scar.
China Miéville, Iron Council.
Karen Miller, The Innocent Mage.
Karen Miller, The Awakened Mage.
Caiseal Mor, The Circle and the Cross.
Caiseal Mor, The Song of the Earth.
Caiseal Mor, The Water of Life.
(William Morris, The Well at the World's End.)
(William Morris, The Wood Beyond the World.)
Naomi Novik, Empire of Ivory.
Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan.
Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast.
Mervyn Peake, Titus Alone.
Sharon Penman, Here Be Dragons.
Sharon Penman, Falls the Shadow.
Sharon Penman, The Reckoning.
Sharon Penman, The Sunne in Splendour.
Plato, The Republic.*
Edgar Allan Poe, Selected Tales of.
(Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho.)
John Scalzi, The Ghost Brigades.
John Scalzi, The Last Colony.
Clifford D. Simak, Out of Their Minds.
Peter Singer, Practical Ethics.*
Maria Snyder, Poison Study.
Maria Snyder, Magic Study.
Maria Snyder, Fire Study.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago.
(Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin.)
(William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White, The Elements of Style.)
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King.
Craig Thompson, Blankets.
Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances.
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
(Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.)
(H. G. Wells, The First Man In The Moon.)
(H. G. Wells, The Time Machine.)
(H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man.)
Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.
Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
Jules Verne, Around The World In Eighty Days.
(Jules Verne, The Underground City.)

(Final count, ~166 books.)

Soon I'll go through my goodreads account, adding any of these books that are missing.

If you actually clicked the cuts, now you truly know how much of a dork I am.

I did realise that since some of you are only friends through fandom, and aren't on my personal journal's flist, you won't know what I look like. I don't know if you're curious at all, but this is me. I am probably younger than you expect.

(Please comment! I did all this work, now pay attention to me. *grin*)

Comments

[feywood.livejournal.com]

You are still incredibly dorky and lovable and so fricking cute. *noms forever*

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

*is nommed. forever*

I still don't get what is so cute. This is Serious Business.

[feywood.livejournal.com]

Seriously cute business.

It is partly that I am personally not so fussed about organising my stuff and partly that you are so darn excited about this.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

There should be an icon of me with the caption "Bibliophibian: Books are serious(ly cute) business) or something. At this rate.

BOOKS. ORGANISATION. What is not exciting about this?

[feywood.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes there should be. And a sign that says "beware the bibliophibian".

Uhhh where to start? :p I DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT. But I am happy you enjoy it?

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

You know what distresses me slightly about the idea of books invading my bed?
Won't their covers get bent...?

There is a certain satisfaction in getting things just so.

[feywood.livejournal.com]

Yes, I imagine that would be distressing. :O

Eh, it is wasted on me, I am afraid. I do not think well in neat and tidy spaces.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

I mean, I used to take books to bed with me when I was a wee thing, but they got so battered.

And I cannot think in messy ones. Are we going to have problems, love?

[feywood.livejournal.com]

Poor books. :(

It doesn't have to be a mess, just. Happily cluttered.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

Yes. Mind you, you've seen the state my copy of TDIR got into? That battered copy was treated with LOVE AND CARE.

So am I forbidden to reorganise the whole flat/house?

[feywood.livejournal.com]

I know :3

I did not say that. Just. Don't expect it to last. >>;;; At least not when I've sat somewhere for a while.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

The poor thing.
...I want to reread TDIR again.

Ahaha. Don't expect me to let it slide for more than a couple of days, and we shall get on fine.

[feywood.livejournal.com]

Isn't that sort of a constant state of being for you?

I think we shall. I can attempt to be tidy, but. Well you've seen what my designated area ends up as when I visit.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

My copies are in Lisvane and Yorkshire. HELP.

I don't mind it getting messy, as long as it's okay for me to tidy.

[feywood.livejournal.com]

Ohno. :(

:D Then we have compromise!

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

There'sacopyinthelibrary.

Woohoo!

[feywood.livejournal.com]

. . . You wouldn't.

I could also always distract you with kisses.
Or baked goods.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

...I think I might.

[bottle-of-shine.livejournal.com]

I created a monster...?

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, I periodically do this reorganisation thing. Just, this time someone gave me an excuse to document it.

[darkranger.livejournal.com]

Your book organising skills are so much better than mine. I just tend to sort them by height.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

It comes of possibly being too obsessive for my own good.

[lil-1337.livejournal.com]

I'm impressed with your organizational skills and how cute you are.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

Heh, thanks. I suspect I may be slightly too obsessive about my books: this is about the seventh major reorganisation since I moved in back in September.

[lil-1337.livejournal.com]

Having things organized is very important.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I'm similarly organised about most of my life (e.g. I carry a notebook around with things I can't forget written in it). Just... not quite so obsessed.

There was a time when my teachers despaired of my organisation, I never handed a piece of homework in, my room was an unearthly mess... I don't even know what happened to me! Maybe I was abducted by aliens.

[lil-1337.livejournal.com]

I tend to go one way or another. Either things are hyper organized or a mess.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

Heh, I can't think when things are a mess, so...