Not A Blog™

I organized my books yesterday. Or rather, I should say that I attempted to organize my books yesterday. It’s a funny thing, that categorization, to fight discombobulation with organization. I knew where all of them were, if that counts for anything, so in a sense they were already organized. The problem was that I didn’t actually know where all of them were. I was right nine times out of ten, but that 10% of the time when I start throwing aside piles of books muttering to myself, “I know I have a hardback copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War but all I can find is this flimsy paperback version”—that bothers me.

So, being out of the loop for two days due to a bout of pink eye which swelled my left eye completely shut (that was Wednesday—Thursday it was better), I did something productive with my sick time. (It’s also why this entry is short, stupid, and late.) Of course, now I no longer know where all my books are—but I know where to go find them and I also know that there’s a much higher chance (say, forty-nine out of fifty, now) of them actually being where I look.

But shades of complexity! Baffling. I narrowed down some of the more obvious ones. All my science fiction fit perfectly on one bookcase with just enough room left over on the last shelf to allow some future expansion. I don’t have much fantasy, but what little I do I put in the bookcase on the opposite side of the room—in defiance of the sci fi/fantasy grouping convention which has invaded bookstores the world over. That was only half a shelf worth, I’m proud to say.

It also turns out I have a lot of books in the “techno-thriller” genre. These aren’t science fiction—not really. Some are military-esque fiction, but it’s mostly like government agent stuff. I vaguelly recall a time in 10th or 11th grade where I was into Tom Clancy for the a flash-in-the-pan span of time; present day evidence of this is three books I have by him which I’ve never read. Anyway, I have half a shelf of this genre also, which is strange to me because I’ve never considered myself really “into” that stuff at all. I guess they just moved in sometime over the past few years.

But how do you catagorize fiction when it starts to overlap? I have a significant amount (slightly over 1 shelf worth) of “regular” fiction. That is, it’s non-genre fiction—except it is, depending on your point of view. Does Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis go with science fiction or regular fiction? Initially I had it with the sci fi, but then that leaves The Screwtape Letters alone in the regular section—and I already have Mere Christianity alone by itself on the metaphysics and philosophy shelf. (Half of which is jammed on top of the books comprising the art section of the shelf because I don’t have enough shelf space for it to get an actual shelf—and most of the philosophy books are slimmer, densly packed works.) Suffice it to say that it is not optimal, given the small size of my library, to have a single author spread out across three different shelves—one work to one shelf. So I lumped Silent Planet with Screwtape.

Organizing my books by genre also caused me some unintended consequences. Since shelf-space is at a premium, catagories bump right up next to each other with utter disregard for thier related-ness. If Chins Could Kill, Bruce Campbell’s autobiography, is the first book, alphabetically by author, in the auto/biographical section. However, almost all of my biographies and autobiographies are people who, at one time or another, worked for NASA. There were so many that I decided not to lump them with nonfiction science, but create a biography catagory. This means that funny-man Bruce Campbell is the first in a line of cold-war-era, kick-ass, yankee-ingenuity, patriotic, American boys who flew rockets to the moon or commanded those who did. Campbell also happens to follow the last book in the previous section (miscellaneous nonfiction), which is Crimes Against Logic by Jamie Whyte. But shouldn’t Crimes go in metaphysics/philosophy? Well, sorta—but I say no because it’s more anectotal and instructional than analyzing the meaning behind logic itself. Never mind that I have my college textbook on logic from the class I took my sophomore year filed under metaphysics/philosophy—and if that’s not instructional, what is? I have no earthly idea what I’m doing.

So you see the problem. Where do these things go? Is The Dilbert Principal more comedy or nonfiction? (I don’t have a section for business; perhaps I should start one.) What about Mike Nelson’s Movie Megacheese? I lumped all my comedy together—with the side effect that Mark Twain ends up in comedy, too, since he was an American humorist. Unfortunately, comedy flows right into thriller—into which I put The DaVinci Code. It doesn’t seem right and fair that Twain should have to sit next to Brown. No one stores their diamonds next to their manure, after all.

It was also interesting to see—in full quantitative force—exactly how much certain genres were over- or underrepresented. I knew I had a lot of sci fi; I didn’t realize I had an entire shelf worth of theoretical physics. Interestingly, the thickest book on my shelf is Norton’s Anthology of World Masterpieces. I have two copies.

But the most interesting piece is the most recent. I also spent yesterday and today printing out a hard-copy of all the entries I’ve done since I relaunched this Not A Blog™ back in August, ‘06. The internet is a frail place, and I’d be heartbroken to see all these pieces disappear forever into the ether. Considering my webhost is in California, one well-placed earthquake could knock me out of commission. So I made a dead tree backup.

The thing is huge. It barely fits in a one inch binder. It’s about 200 pages, and it only covers four months. (You’ll recall I took November off.) Insanity.

Now I just have to figure out which section it goes in.

-Ted