Bookshelves?

No need to be cute. When I say "bookshelves" I am naturally referring not only to bookshelves per se, but also to the assorted crates I still haven't gotten around to throwing out after moving. For now, "bookshelves" means "off the floor."

All righty, then. Let's go.

This one is an anthology. This one is a classic. This one is sci-fi. This one is a children's classic. This one is Geek Love.

Hmm. OK. I'll start a new category. "Books I love."

This is sci-fi. This is an anthology. This is a book I love. This is a book I love. This is a book I love. This is an anthology of sci-fi that I love.

Nggh! OK. For now, I'll put it with the anthologies.

Heh. Look at that. I've already got Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas right next to Naked Lunch. Maybe I'll start a subcategory of "Druggie Books. That I love. That are also classics." Lessee, here's The Teachings of Don Juan. Druggie. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Total Druggie.

Now wait a minute. There are very few actual drugs in that one.

Yeah, but Kesey was stoned out of his mind while he wrote it, and he based Chief Broom's hallucinations on his own LSD trips. And did you know that while working at the hospital, he convinced one of the night staff to give him electroshock, so he could write about it convincingly?

Shut up! Damn English majors. Where was I? Vonnegut. He's kinda sci-fi, right? Babbit Classic. That I love.

Maybe I should start over. "Books I love" is just too damn big a category. Only put things there if they honestly don't fit anywhere else. Besides, the main issue here is going through the massive pile of books on the floor. I don't want to sort through everything already on the bookshelves too.

OK, then. "Books I have read." "Classics (subdivided into "Read" and "Not Read")." "Books I haven't read yet, but am prepared to love" and "What the fuck was I thinking."

Anthology. Classic (not read). Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Uhhh...Sci-fi classic. Nggh! Ok, remain calm. It's a Book I Love. Maybe call those Modern Classics, and stuff like Frankenstein (Read Classic) and War and Peace (Unread Classic) Classic Classics? Nggh! Nggh, I say!

I'm going to end up with 400 separate piles.

OK. Start with the big categories. Find all the anthologies. Anthology. Anthology. Humor anthology. Horror anthology. Twain Anthology. Flannery O'Connor anthology. Beat Anthology. Humor Anthology (Classic, mostly unread). Nggh!

Remain calm, Ana. For now, they're all Anthologies. Stop trying to make this harder than it actually is.

Nonfiction. Poetry. Those are small, simple categories. Work on those for a while. Nonfiction. Nonfiction. Comic Books. (Comic books? Is that a category?) Poetry. Poetry. Shakespeare anthology. Uhhh....

It's poetry, dammit. Call it poetry, get it on the shelf, and be done with it.

I should put all the books with Shakespearian titles somewhere near the Shakespeare anthology. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Brave New World, Nothing Like the Sun...

Oh, you're very clever. But shouldn't Brave New World be in the Druggie Section? Soma, and all.

I'm starting over.

***

So, right now, everything is off the floor. This is a good thing. There's still problems, though. The Poetry section ended up being bigger than the shelf space I set aside for it. There are three separate Anthology sections, all mostly subdivided into Single Author or Genre. And emptying an entire shelf to make room for a category lost its charm pretty quickly.

Somewhere during the process, the "Books I love" shelf and "Books I really want to read" shelf merged. Together, they take up about three shelves, but there's also a few books I've read and don't particularly want to read again mixed in there too.

Basically, all I think I accomplished was getting everything on a shelf. I could have done that in 20 minutes, but because I thought I was more ambitious than I actually ended up being, it took me four hours. I still don't think I could find any given title I was specifically looking for. I might have an idea where to start looking, though. For today, that's good enough.

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