#It's technically literary criticism but I don't own many books in that vein
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“Ok so the other bookshelf hasn’t arrived yet but why don’t I start organising my books, it will be a fun activity and useful!”
What nobody tells you about said fun activity is that you have to make Choices about how to organise and it’s all very confusing
#I run into this problem EVERY DAMN TIME and I still hate it#I like my history books arranged a certain way so that tends to fuck up the Dewey Decimal or any other system I attempt to impose#Ok so for example what to do with primary historical sources like chronicles and collections of letters#Do I put them with the mediaeval literature section (some of which also functions as a primary historical source- i.e. the Brus)#Or do I put them with my history books (ordered by time period and country)#Or do I put them in their own tiny little category of their own- an extremely confusing and apparently irrational category#Or biographies of authors of which I only have two or three#Do I put them with my other history books or next to the literary works they wrote or on their own little section again#But since I only own maybe three it would be a weird little section just Aphra Behn James Herriot and Robert Henryson by themselves#And then what on earth do I do with C.S. Lewis' Allegory of Love#It's technically literary criticism but I don't own many books in that vein#Never mind the question of whether I should separate novels poetry and plays even if it breaks up an author's output#I don't really want to have to look for Violet Jacob or Oscar Wilde in two or three different places#And then sometimes a book doesn't fall into either of those three categories- should split Nan Shepherd's novels from the Living Mountain?#And what if it's a 'Collected Works' by an author which contains a bunch of non-fiction historical essays as well as a novel?#And don't even get me started on what I'm supposed to do with the Road to Wigan Pier#And then THEN we come to Wodehouse#Do I put Leave it to Psmith with the other Psmith books or in the midst of the Blandings books?#I want all the Psmith series together but what if some hypothetical person new to Wodehouse wandered in#And wanted to start either series at random- would they be confused at the introduction of Blandings too early?#Wouldn't they miss out on some of the best bits that come with knowing Blandings BEFORE Psmith?#I don't know who this hypothetical person is by the way#Nobody's wandering into my house and browsing my bookshelves except me so I don't know who I'm curating this for#I suppose in the back of my mind I always thought I would have kids who would one day be pulling randomly at the family bookshelves#And so that's why I've saved some of the fiction books but I'm not likely to have or even want children so what is the point#I'm not even the kind of person who regularly rereads my childhood favourites but somehow I can't bring myself to throw the kids' books out#It's an immense waste of space and a bit pretentious to have lots of books that nobody else will ever read#Honestly I'd have been happier running a public library or a bookshop I think or even having a flatmate to share books with#Ah well if this is a problem at least it's quite a nice one to have; first world problems only this evening I'll count my blessings#Earth & Stone
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