melannen | #booksort

#booksort

Last night I:

-had to go to Boring Meeting after work
-was stuck in traffic
-did not have time to eat dinner first, so heated up a can of stuff to take with
-dropped can of stuff all over parking lot, did not have dinner
-apparently only had 3 DPNs with my sock, so could not even knit during meeting.
~Finally! Caught! A! Snorlax! During! The! Meeting! :D :D :D :D

I think I now have all the original PokeGo pokemon except the legendary and regional ones, maybe it's time to quit finally?

Anyway, booksort! Yeah sorry there's going to be a lot of this for awhile.

This is going even slower than my worst predictions, sigh. Unfortunately I now have, like, three days to get it to a reasonably tidy pausing point, so I guess that's my weekend!

I have figured out (why did it take so long?) that most of my books sort fairly naturally into four base-level categories, as such: Things To Make And Do; Stuff About People; Stuff About Not People; Weird Stuff. AKA: Applied Sciences; Social Sciences; Biological and Physical Sciences; Not Science At All.

There are things that I am still unsure about (Do books about Homo floresiensis go in Stuff About People or Stuff About Not People or in Weird Stuff with the dead bodies and the fairylore? How about on mummification, are they people or medical science or religion/magic or how-to? Do biographies of artists go with books on how art is made, or books on people? Is gender a Thing About People, a Weird Inexplicable Thing, a biological science things, or a Thing To Make And Do?) Most of them I have managed to narrow down my constantly reminding myself this classification system is about why I personally am interested in a thing, not about some sort of universal system of kinds, and find a place.

I'm stumped on ~200 books that sort of group into a category of language/semiotics/symbology, such as: undeciphered scripts, calligraphy, cryptography, linguistics, etymology and toponymy, translation, poetic forms, fiction writing advice and process, histories of SF fandom, etc.

I kind of want to keep them all together, but I can't decide which of the four top-levels they'd all fit together in. Do they follow folklore and storytelling and unsolved mysteries and sigils and amulets and futurisms into Weird Stuff (grammar and spelling both mean 'magic', after all)? Do they go into Things to Make And Do with puzzle books and how-tos and artists' biographies and books about comics and design motifs? Do they go into Social Sciences with history and anthropology and subcultures and cartography and assorted biographies of people? Do I split them up and put the mysteries in one category and the histories in one category and the poets' handbooks in a third? Do I keep them their own subcat?

Augh.

I have, however, figured out that it is much more productive to pull up a pile of books and go "okay, I have to get rid of at least 10% - 15% of these, which 1-2 are going?" than to agonize over how much joy each one brings me. I can pull out my 1-2 least favorite much more easily than deciding how much I *really* need every one. So we're going with that method instead.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I have figured out (why did it take so long?) that most of my books sort fairly naturally into four base-level categories, as such: Things To Make And Do; Stuff About People; Stuff About Not People; Weird Stuff. AKA Applied Sciences, Social Sciences, Biological and Physical Sciences; Not Science At All.

...isn't that five categories? (I am sleepy and possibly not counting right, but.)

No? I mean, you can sub-split them up various ways, but the base list is supposed to read as:

1. things to make and do
2. stuff about people
3. stuff about not people
4. weird stuff

And then the troublesome Stuff About How We Talk About Stuff category makes 5, if I leave it separate.

I haven't really settled on good category names for some of them yet, though, so maybe my list was confusing.

Edited 2019-05-10 15:17 (UTC)

I'm just going off where you put the semi-colons!

Things To Make And Do;
Stuff About People;
Stuff About Not People;
Weird Stuff. AKA Applied Sciences, Social Sciences, Biological and Physical Sciences;
Not Science At All.

But you are ignoring the period, which over-rides commas and semicolons!

It's supposed to be:

Things To Make And Do;
Stuff About People;
Stuff About Not People;
Weird Stuff.

AKA Applied Sciences,
Social Sciences,
Biological and Physical Sciences;
Not Science At All.

...and I was inconsistent about my semicolons because I too am sleepy. :P I will go fix it.

Ahh. I understand now! All becomes clear.

My nonfiction is just straight up alpha by author (as opposed to my fiction, which is sorted by color), so I have no strong opinions on classification systems.

I want to get it by topic for the purpose of weeding (so I can compare, say, all the books about the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake that I own, just in case I don't really need six). Beyond that it's by size (for space efficiency reasons) and then each shelf is individually sorted into a rainbow by color, which I've found equally pleasant to look at and easier to find things in than a full by-color sort that flows across all the shelves. :D

I envy people who do this. My book storage/organization method is "original bookshelves ruthlessly organized by space" and then "whatever fits jammed in above and beside."

I mean, that's what it is in *practice*, usually, but there's a base organization under it. :P I got to the point about ten years ago though that if it didn't have at least some kind of base organization, I would never find anything. And I do pull books for reference fairly often so I need to be able to find stuff (also I have, like, an internal 'don't end up like Grandma' rule that once a collection of stuff reaches the point where you can't quickly access something if you want to, it's a hoard, not a collection, and it needs to go.) It helps that my LibraryThing catalog is scrupulously updated, so I can use that as an index, as long as they're sorted by something LibraryThing tracks.

(also I have, like, an internal 'don't end up like Grandma' rule that once a collection of stuff reaches the point where you can't quickly access something if you want to, it's a hoard, not a collection, and it needs to go.)

"I feel so called out rn" as they say

I love LibraryThing too! Although they do seem to lose some data -- the covers from Amazon are always all fucked up, and I swear I have books that are missing from the most recent database.

The covers from Amazon are in fact always fucked up, but that's because Amazon is awful and there's only so much they can do within Amazon's rules. There's an option to turn off all Amazon covers, and then you can go in and manually choose a cover from the user-uploaded ones. (You can also use that dialog to steal the Amazon-provided cover and pretends it's a user upload, not that I would ever suggest breaking Amazon's TOS that way.) It's a little more trouble, but Amazon will no longer have the ability to random change what cover displays on your book.

(There's also a widget you can put on your front page that shows you a rotating selection of new user-uploaded covers for Amazon-covered books you own, if you just want a fun way to waste time.)

Do you mean you have books you added to your catalog that aren't appearing it in anymore, or---? There was a data loss issue late last year, iirc, but they managed to retrieve all the books from it, although some of them might have weird metadata or be in the wrong collection. Or you might just have books that accidentally weren't added to your default collection - I've panicked about that a few times.

IF you really have lost books in your catalog, if you report it on the "bug collectors" talk group, they're usually pretty diligent about tracking down and fixing those types of bugs; ongoing book loss isn't something I've seen anyone else report lately.

You can also use that dialog to steal the Amazon-provided cover and pretends it's a user upload, not that I would ever suggest breaking Amazon's TOS that way

I would NEVER do such a thing, GASP. -- Yeah, the problem is I've been a member for 10 years now and when I started, I was wayyy more naive about using Amazon data including covers and titles, and Amazon wasn't quite as evil. And at this point, the whole library is too big to edit -- there are hundreds and hundreds of bad or missing covers, and the number just gets bigger.

Do you mean you have books you added to your catalog that aren't appearing it in anymore

More like, books I know I have, or can actually find, that are older and not anywhere in my catalogue, altho that might be related to a problem they had with searches. It's happened often enough I'm kinda skeptical of the integrity of the database.

....I have not had the best of luck with the bug collecting group.

It's improved the last couple years because they hired someone whose main job was to respond to those kinds of threads.

IDK - there are definitely still issues with lag in the search indexing, sometimes up to a couple days, but I've never had any data loss other than one-time things that were reported and acknowledged, and I've never seen any of the other long-time regular power users in Talk complaining about database integrity (EVERYTHING ELSE, they complain about...) If it's all older stuff, is it possible they just weren't ever added?

Updating all the covers from the old Amazon ones as I go is part of why this process is taking so long. :P

I've never seen any of the other long-time regular power users in Talk complaining about database integrity (EVERYTHING ELSE, they complain about...)

....ahahahaha

If it's all older stuff, is it possible they just weren't ever added?

That's what I was thinking, but I was really rigorous about adding books when I started (plus I had uh fewer books, LOL). It's probably more human error on my part, I guess, but it still makes me suspicious.

Updating all the covers from the old Amazon ones as I go is part of why this process is taking so long. :P

Amazon just did it AGAIN, nearly every single fucking book with "Oxford" in the title and an Amazon cover now has this image! (and stuff like Oxford World's Classics got hit too)

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/P/0192833804.01._SX200_SY250_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

That was at least 50-75 covers to fix alone. Bleah. I just want maybe like a warning flag or something, altho I know they probably can't do that. It's so demoralizing to find my covers are not just fucked, they keep getting more and more fucked.

If you turn off the Amazon covers, at least it won't get any worse...? (And that doesn't erase the data of which Amazon cover you would have had, I was worried about that for awhile, but it still shows as selected in the cover change dialog, just not anywhere else.) I find going in and fixing Amazon covers relaxing, but then I still have 4000 unfixed ones, so not that relaxing.

I don't think there's any way to get a warning if one is about to change (amazon just...does it, silently) but you can go into your stats/memes and get a catalog filter of all your books with Amazon covers.

Also, the mobile app has a built-in way to photograph & correct covers that makes it way easier to add not-cheating real ones than it used to be.

That is all BRILL, thank you!

+10000.

(How many sideways books on your shelves right now? We just finished a 17-bag friends-of-library sort so everybody is standing soldier right now.)

Welllllll are you at all familiar with the crossed letters the Victorians wrote? because it sort of goes like, the books are shelved upright and then there are more books shelved sidewise until they hide the original books.

/o\

Oh, you mean that kind of sideways!

Mine are mostly shelved with one row of books that are very close to the full height of the shelf, and a second row in front of flat ones that are not close to the height of the shelf. I only start thinking of it as "jammed in above and beside" when I have horizontal ones jammed into the bare inch of space left above the vertical row, or face-out ones in the bare inch of space in front of the horizontal row!

(For awhile I had my fiction paperbacks as 2 inches or so of books laid flat across the back of the shelf to create a "riser" for a back tier, and then a second lower tier in front. I used books from long series for the risers, so I could see at least part of the spines of all the others.

...I had to stop because I needed the vertical space above the lower tiers.)

Mine are mostly shelved with one row of books that are very close to the full height of the shelf, and a second row in front of flat ones that are not close to the height of the shelf.

Mine used to look like that, yeah. Then I....got more books! but not a lot more bookcases.

I only start thinking of it as "jammed in above and beside" when I have horizontal ones jammed into the bare inch of space left above the vertical row, or face-out ones in the bare inch of space in front of the horizontal row!

........NO COMMENT

I have, however, figured out that it is much more productive to pull up a pile of books and go "okay, I have to get rid of at least 10% - 15% of these, which 1-2 are going?" than to agonize over how much joy each one brings me. I can pull out my 1-2 least favorite much more easily than deciding how much I *really* need every one. So we're going with that method instead.

That is frankly why the Kondo method does not work for me with books. I can sit there for half an hour and rationalize and agonize about how no I NEED something, and realize I am being ridiculous, and then feel bereft if I put it in the Nope pile. It works pretty well for everything else! Not books.

Yeah, I think there's multiple reasons why people need to tidy/cull.

If your problem is that you never learned how to cull in the first place, or you've gotten way behind on it, so you own a lot of things that you don't know why you own, the 'does this bring joy' is an excellent strategy to learn (it's also what most people who do cull for maintenance probably use, more or less,. whether they learned it from KonMari or Grandpa.)

If the problem is you're really bad at storing and organizing your stuff, Marie Kondo's organizing/display methods are pretty good (I am storing ~6000 books in one small bedroom and can find any of them at a few minutes' notice, there is only so far you can get on optimizing storage without breaking free of three-dimensional space, okay, and I am asymptotically approaching that point.)

If the problem is that there's some underlying issue (you don't have the spoons, you are having a conflict with housemates about usage of space, etc.) you have to solve that in order to solve the tidying issue, and/or accept that the mess is currently an adaptive coping strategy.

And if the problem is that you have exactly the right amount of stuff for you, but not enough space to keep it in, and 'getting more space' isn't an option, then well, let me know if anyone figures that out. (A quota + a good record of what's discarded seems to be working at least better than the previous things I've tried.)

I am storing ~6000 books in one small bedroom

//IS IMPRESSED (are there pix??)

And if the problem is that you have exactly the right amount of stuff for you, but not enough space to keep it in, and 'getting more space' isn't an option, then well, let me know if anyone figures that out.

My problem is I actually did major culls of my library -- before I first went to college (mostly childhood YA books), twice after grad school for money (easily 500+ books each time) and once after moving. And every. single. time. I discovered there were books I was really unhappy I didn't have any more, or genuinely needed for some reason, or had gotten rid of by accident, and there was no way to tell at the time. So that made me wary of major culls in general. A lot of the old books I tossed at seventeen had unrealized sentimental value and/or are impossible to buy now for reasonable prices, and they're not digitized.

And not to go horribly TMI but a lot of my books are sort of the only remnant of earlier careers I wanted (fiction writer, college professor, researcher) and giving those up feels like the last bit of giving up hope. Ugh. (Plus, I KNOW I will need them as soon as I get rid of them.)

My problem is more that I did major culls of my library several times previously, and at that point, got rid of all the books I was willing to get rid of, so all that's left are ones I need. :P There were some I had as a kid that I kinda wish I'd kept, but most of them I managed to hang on to.

I've actually been pretty good at getting rid of stuff that makes me go "ugh" to look at it (even if it's just from the stink of a festering dream) - and KonMari helped with that, actually - but I definitely have a lot of books that will be useful if I ever write that one thing I've been meaning to write since middle school and definitely need to keep them because of that.

I do think that part of the "underlying issues" tidying aspect is that some people need to do a tidying of their dreams before they can do a tidying of their stuff. Which doesn't mean get rid of everything that reminds you of something you used to love! But it can mean being ruthless about how much of the thing you still need around. And it can mean being ruthless about admitting something is over - i.e. if your small business hasn't made any profit in ten years, maybe it's time to pull out a few souvenirs of the good times and dump the garage full of unsold inventory and marketing fliers. And sometimes it's really good to say "what part of the dream is still important to me, and how can I reshape it around that core into something that's still possible?"

And also that is super tough and painful work and sometimes it's find to just keep being a bibliophibian.

Sometimes I think I'm very bad at that tidying of dreams, sometimes I remember that I have, indeed, picked up 20-year-old dreams and made them go again even when logic would say they were long past.

So I dunno. That part is very hard.

I do think that part of the "underlying issues" tidying aspect is that some people need to do a tidying of their dreams before they can do a tidying of their stuff. Which doesn't mean get rid of everything that reminds you of something you used to love! But it can mean being ruthless about how much of the thing you still need around. And it can mean being ruthless about admitting something is over - i.e. if your small business hasn't made any profit in ten years, maybe it's time to pull out a few souvenirs of the good times and dump the garage full of unsold inventory and marketing fliers. And sometimes it's really good to say "what part of the dream is still important to me, and how can I reshape it around that core into something that's still possible?"

And also that is super tough and painful work and sometimes it's find to just keep being a bibliophibian.

Sometimes I think I'm very bad at that tidying of dreams, sometimes I remember that I have, indeed, picked up 20-year-old dreams and made them go again even when logic would say they were long past.

So I dunno. That part is very hard.

Aw, that's really thoughtful and interesting and I love it. Definitely something for me to chew (not ruminate) on.

I've been thinking about the stuff in that comment a lot but I figure I should at least get the books mostly shelved before I start pretending I'm an expert on tidying. :P

Tidying dreams is hard. I gave away my metalsmithing tools years ago but still miss them, sometimes--even though I was never going to use them again. I cling to glassworking supplies I haven't touched in a decade.

...submitting to

metaquotes is a thing I'd like to do, if you're willing.

sure, always!

some people need to do a tidying of their dreams

Yes, I think this is an entire complex and challenging process that kind of gets lost in Kondo's blithe "just accept that you're never going to read that English for Japanese Businessmen book". Some of us, especially those who are good at finding and making stories, are so immersed in our own stories of who we are, have been, or might/will be that it's very hard to untangle it all and find the reality underneath.

For me it was hard numbers that did it: I realized that if I was only reading a couple of books a month, that was about 25 books a year, and in the time it took me to read this year's 25 books, 25 more books I really wanted to read would be published, and so technically I did not need to own any books at all—I could get each year's books from the library as they came out and return them when I was done, and see no reduction and feel no restriction in my reading. In practice I'm still keeping quite a lot of books, because there are other reasons to own a book, but that complete reorientation of my story about myself as a reader, the understanding that I was no longer a teenager reading three books a day or a professional reviewer reading three books a week, was really necessary to the culling process.

I put my calligraphy books with my art instruction books, but then I only own "how to" type of calligraphy books, not any on the history of writing or such. The artist biographies I have usually go with the comics by that artist, because most also have a lot of illustrations. If I had other artist biographies I'd put them with the art books if they were illustration heavy. The one mummy book I own I've but together with the one on Egyptian religion, which I put in my history section. I have gender theory in its own section together with feminist writing in the social sciences. ETA: Unless the gender theorist is one who mostly writes about gender from a history of science and science theory perspective, in which case I group them there to keep author works together, because I have a lot of history of science books as it was my minor in college for a while.

Edited 2019-05-10 18:04 (UTC)

Most of my calligraphy books are "how to", but I have a couple that are more paleography, and then there are the ones that are about illuminated manuscripts, and the ones about specific manuscripts like the Book of Kells, and the ones about Mayan codices, and the attempts to decipher Mayan glyphs, and the attempts to decipher things like the Phaistos disc, and the Voynich manuscript, and by then I'm way out in the weeds... I think maybe most of the language is going to end up in the how-tos, though, I'm leaning more in that direction the more I think about it (partly because a bunch of them are already on my desk as reference for an art project!)

I think gender & sexuality are going together into Social Sciences along with ones about other identity groups. Except the sex manuals, which go in To Do along with the etiquette and householder's guides.

Yeah, if you use them for reference it makes sense to put them with the how-tos. I have a couple of books about old cars that are with the drawing books, because I only got them for reference pictures for a comic I was drawing (way before you could just do an image search online).

This is why every categorisation system needs a "miscellaneous" category! :P (but also I feel your frustration on this intensely.)

I have the almanacs (incl. the Hodgmans) and the Books of Miscellaneous Essays in their own 'uncategorized' set, no worries! :D

Best friend had many moves due her husband's job. Her method was to look at each book when she packed boxes and ask herself if she'd miss this book in a couple of months when she unpacked and shelved her books in a new home.

I thought I could do something like that, but if it's "would you miss it on an emotional level?" the answer is ALWAYS yes (or it would already be gone) and if the answer is "would you need it for something" - well, maybe not in the next couple of months? I only get out, say, the calligraphy stuff every couple of years. But I DO get it out every couple of years....

If I was moving a lot I would have very different calculations though.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

#booksort

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When you put it so well

Re: When you put it so well

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