[Ntschotschi]

The day started sunny and quite normal when suddenly an unexspected attack
of "Ordnungswut" -("order rage"?)- struck me and I felt an irrestistable urge to put my bookshelves in order (being German maybe it's an hereditary thing - I wonder...)

Since I moved to Berlin a few months ago the usual chaos in my shelves had grown to hitherto unprecedented proportions so I nearly despaired.
Although my scientific books and other literature are quite well organized I never put a system to my fantasy books before.

So interesting and troubling questions came up: How to order my fantasy books?
I tried "Horror", "Science fiction" and "Fantasy" first, but that didn't work out too well bcause of many "cross overs".
Alphabetical order is not too useful either, then I tried "females"and "males", "classic" and "new", "finished" series
and "unfinished", "favorites", "good ones" and "miscelleanus", "similarities" and so on....
Although I still haven't found the clue I'm quite content now. At least all the books by one author are in one place in the right order. Which was a bit frustrating too cause I noticed that a few books are missing, have to start searching now...

So my question is: Are you a tidy bunch of people who can blindly grab into the shelve to get the desired book or are you the rather chaotic type like me who buys the same book twice cause you don't remember that it's already sitting somewhere in the heap?
Hopefully waiting for enlightenment http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif

[lleatherau]

It was when I discovered I had two copies of Winter's Heart. Thought I'd better get some semblance of order.

[Warewolf]

Oh, I am so the order freak. With 800 plus books on my shelves, order is a must. All my mass market paperbacks are in order first by author, then by series, then by title if they don't belong to a series. All other books (hardbacks, trade paperbacks, and other odd sized paperbacks) are in order first by size, then by author, then by series, then by title if not in a series. In addition, I've got all these books in an Excel spreadsheet with authors, series title, series number, title, copyright date, number of pages, whether I've read it or not, and cover artist. Thus, I can sort them by any one of these categories http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif Without this kind of organization, I'd never be able to find anything or know exactly what I have at any given time. I just spent two hours last night reorganizing the bookshelves so I could put in all the books I've picked up in the last three months.

And sometimes I just like to stand in front of my bookshelves and admire my books http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Loque]

i order my books with some kind of new, 'brilliant' system every six months or so, but i never put the books back properly, and new books just get dumped on top, so basically any sense of order degenerates within a few weeks.

[Ntschotschi]

Warewolf... Are you serious?
Congratulations,
I'm shattered and impressed!
How did you manage that?
I don't even know how many books I have. Did you start this system when you started to buy books or did you introduce it afterwards?
I can see the advantages but mustn't you spend a lot of time to keep things in order?

[Lamanai]

Chaos, Chaos, Chaos...

Never let it be said that there's order to anything in my house. I organize things very easily. My bookshelves are sorted by where there was space on the shelf when I wanted to put a book there. I don't know. I've just never found that it was really necessary to organize my books. It's not because I don't have many of them, I have tons of books, but I really just don't care. I like the look of full bookshelves, but it really doesn't matter to me that my Modesitt books span several different rooms...

I do segregate the Hardbound and Trade format from the mass market books, but that's really because of shelf size. I tend to keep my mass market books on short shelves on which the others won't fit.

[kray3]

i have a very light order..

Stephen King gets his own shelf.. which is rather stuffed (3 layers deep)

non-fantasy gets a shelf.. also very full (2 layers)

my to read pile has 2 shelves

and my fantasy is sorted.. the more i like it hte higher it is

[SusF]

Ordnungswut! I love that word, and it explains SO much!

Well to answer the question, my literature books are in one section, not in order, pottery/art in another, history together, gardening books have five shelves, grouped by size and a bit by topic.

Organized chaos maybe. My paperbacks are stuck in every available corner that will get them off the floor. Some in my closet, quite a few stacked three deep on my highest shelves. I want to organize them, but don't have room.

Ordnungswut. Love it.

Susan

[Vitriol]

Until recently, books were put on the floor until no carpet was visible, and then were put on the shelf in some random order, or accumulated in drifts around the edge of the room once I ran out of bookshelf space.

However, I recently went on a major purge, removing every book from the shelves, giving each author a seperate pile on the floor. I then sorted these into some sort of rational order, bought some more bookshelves, and put them all on.

How long the unnatural state will last I'm not sure, but now at least I can put my hand on any particular book within a few seconds.

[Ntschotschii]

This is a fraudulent post, please disregard!


This thread is going nowhere. i thought we were going to discuss interesting stuff. oh well. sigh.

[This message has been edited by erebus (edited February 13, 2002).]