#booksort

[melannen]

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.

Comments

[ambyr]

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.)

[kore]

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.

[ratcreature]

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.

[sylvaine]

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

[vicki_rae]

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.