Stripping yourself of objects is the most fantastic relief. A visit to the recycling centre brings a sense of elation & power barely matched by sex, violence, or even revising a sentence. But why, in my case, is a decrease in the number of books always matched by an increase in the amount of outdoor clothing ? Ah, I see. OK. Anyway, more scandals from my downsized bookshelves–
Tim Cahill
Italo Calvino
Truman Capote
Angela Carter
Raymond Carver
Willa Cather
Bruce Chatwin
Anton Chekhov
Norman Cohn
Colette
Peter Coveney & Roger Highfield
Robertson Davies
WH Davies
Richard Dawkins
Lawrence Durrell
I don’t know who’s unluckiest, Angela Carter or WH Davies. (*& for episode 1, see here.)
The idea of a threesome with Roger Highfield is extremely unappealing.
Colette would be up to it.
Angela Carter doing “In Cold Blood” and Capote tackling “Invisible Cities” (which somehow seems a meta-prequel to his lost novel “Answered Prayers”)? I’m up for a Colette novella centred on the pursuit of the millennium, too!
I’m just glad to see Colette there. Sometimes guys seem to be a bit shy of her…
Hi Mia. Never me: I’ve loved her since the early 70s.
Dawkins and Durrell would make a good crimefighting team Dick’n'Lol fight monotheism and linear narrative structures while sipping Ricard and chasing boys in dazzling grubby estaminets along the Mediterranean.
Same general genre as the Yaxley miniseries.
Zali, I cannot fault it.
Doesn’t sound like a bad lifestyle. Anything to keep the old horse from the door.
A play in which Chekhov and Chatwin set off across Siberia in search of an explanation for the Tunguska fireball. In Act Three, a pistol is fired.
I don’t alphabetize: I got Dorothy Parker sandwiched between Gogol and Shelley. Percy.
Hi Zak. Was that deliberate, or a random result. I mean, points either way.
Narratives of randomisation, 1. I walked into Simon Ings’ house one day in the 90s & found his books were disordered on the shelves & thought, So that’s what they’re doing nowadays, I wish I’d thought of that. I went back to my house & disordered my books along the shelves using various procedures (see below). Wow, it worked. My head got very loose. Years later I told Simon what I did and thanked him. “What a method!” I said. He said: “I’d just moved in that week. The day after you came I had them back in the proper order again.”
Narratives of randomisation, 2. How do you make disorder ? One of the methods I used to break up alphabetisation for a while was, store the books according to colour of spine. I thought that was a good joke, using one kind of order to damage another. I was boasting about this to an academic one day, & about how disorder was crucial for keeping your head open, & she said: “But that’s just totally anal!” in an angry way & walked off. Never joke about disorder with an academic.
My books move too much to sustain any particular order. It is more time-efficient, under the math of the current lifestyle, to leave them disordered.
Most books go in the kitchen, by size.
Books I haven’t finished go over the bed, to remind I haven’t read them yet.
Books I’m reading tend to end up on the floor.
Books I consult constantly end up as mouse pads.
I’ve only once alphabetised my books, and got verbally flayed by my wife for doing it as I should have been spending that time being domestic. (True, I could have argued that, well, what’s more domestic than alphabetising one’s books ? But then would not, now, be living to be writing this…)
Since then, with each move, the dis/order they’ve come out of the boxes is the same they’ve kept on the shelves, pretty much. Grouped: poetry, novels, short stories, non-fiction; but that’s all.
I put mine in the draws of my 1980s divan-bed, and let them get on with it in the dark. Haven’t caught them out, yet
Size and colour is the way to go.
When I was working in a library borrowers would regularly come to the counter asking for a book that they accidentally handed back the week before. They couldn’t remember the title, the author, or often the subject. Yr index was usually, “it’s a small red book.”
By which they meant a large blue book.
I resemble your remark!
when I lived in camberwell, I painted my front room penguin book orange and had a wall shelved with the books.
the crime (green and white) was in the hall (a deep acid green).
It didn’t last. there weren’t enough rooms. I managed alphabetical when we went to peckham; now it’s a catastrophe in every room.
Many, many points for that, Andrew. (I’d like to know who’s liaising dangerously on your shelves.)
Strange thing: your list prompted me to find my collection of Chekhov. When I located his book of plays, I found my copy of “Maldoror” between acts 2 and 3 of “The Seagull”. Ducasse was missed more.
I’m afraid my shelves are always ordered by category and alphabetized by author (except the stretches my 2-year-old son can reach, which are randomised by toddler). I draw the line at ordering by publication date – I’m not quite that anal.
Despite this degree of order, and being able to find any desired book in seconds, purposeful approaches to my bookshelves still inevitably dissipate into countless sidetracks.