I’m a thrill-seeker, me; when life gets boring, it’s time to engage in the extreme sport of rearranging my home library. My goal this month has been to shake things up and trick myself into being lured by my own books. After all, I was attracted enough to acquire them all. But at some point it’s as if I stop seeing the individual books and they collectively become a sort of wallpaper.

And as I’ve mentioned to some of you, I’ve been disappointed that attempts to highlight segments of my collection – e.g. shelves devoted to BIPOC authors and Women’s Prize nominees – failed: these books seemed more likely to sit unread for years. It must be something to do with creating a feeling of obligation. Even my piles of foodie reads and medical memoirs, two of my favourite subgenres, have gotten ignored.

Signed copies shelves: fiction; nonfiction

Setting up special-interest sections backfired, so what next? First, I switched up locations in the upstairs; second, I adjusted the classifications. The one hard and fast rule in my collection is that I separate read from unread books. I don’t currently have room to display read paperbacks, which are in boxes upstairs awaiting built-in shelving in our lounge. I only have one bookcase for read hardbacks, and it’s at capacity; I’ll soon have to reconsider what I display them (and double-stack in the meantime).

Nonfiction priority; hardback fiction; upcoming challenges and miscellaneous

For my fiction TBR, I interfiled everything into one sequence. Previously, I had kept story collections and novellas separate, but the latter are easy to spot. I’m a librarian at heart and could never eradicate alphabetical order. But, as Jan Morris observed in A Writer’s House in Wales, “I am … stymied in my methodical ordering of this library by the matter of size. Books can be maddeningly un-uniform, meaning that some … which should be side by side with their fellows, are too tall to get on the proper shelves.” Thus a separate shelf for hardbacks and oversize paperbacks.

Upcoming and seasonal reads; first half of Fiction A-Z

Then, on a whim, I decided to mix it up by creating a rainbow bookcase on the landing. (To make it more of a challenge, I told myself I could use no Penguins for orange. And I put all the green Viragos together on a different shelf for visual impact.) This made me appreciate just how many books have blue spines, and dull white or black ones! I’m rather pleased with the result, but I will have to be loose about the contents: books will come and go as I read and pass them on, and add others in. In fact, I slotted three in yesterday – two green and a pink – after a trip to our local indie bookstore for my friend’s belated 70th birthday treat.

Other areas I’ve created:

• Priority shelves for time-sensitive books (to be reviewed at publication or for challenges)
• Nonfiction priority – two shelves, one in approximated Dewey order; another that includes review copies and some part-read

Fiction A-Z, part II

Plus some I’ve maintained:

• Priority to reread
• Seasonal books, in a box
• Signed copies – fiction and nonfiction separate; the handful of unread ones are offset

All through this process, I kept an eye out for books I was no longer keen to read. I ended up jettisoning another 81 (after the 90–100 I culled last year during our hallway redecoration), 17 of which I’ll sell; the rest will be donated to charity or the Little Free Library or given to book club friends as part of the book swap game we do for our holiday social each year.

To reread (top shelf and bottom left stack); nonfiction priority

My criteria for getting rid of books were, as I’ve expounded in several posts before.

• Is it a duplicate copy? I used to keep two copies of certain books, thinking I’d do buddy reads with my husband. I have to face facts, though: buddy reads don’t work for us. He tends to read one book at a time and races ahead, while I falter or give up entirely (ahem, Cloud Atlas). I’ve only kept multiple copies where I think it’s a book we might consider setting for book club.
• Is the condition too poor? I’m not usually overly picky about this, but I did ditch four books whose spines were so faded that the title was no longer legible.
• Am I really going to read it? This is a difficult one. I like the idea of certain books but forget that I have random pet peeves, and only so much space – and time. If unsure, I checked the Goodreads page. Ratings and reviews from my friends, but also from randoms whose taste I’ve come to know, can be very helpful in telling me if something is likely to be for me. Some examples of books I decided against keeping, and the reasons:
  • Peculiar Ground by Lucy Hughes-Hallett: A doorstopper of a saga that starts in the 17th century, one of my last choices of historical period to read about.
  • The Mammoth Cheese by Sheri Holman: Shortlisted for the Orange Prize, but it’s over 400 pages and has great potential to be hokey.
  • Eothen by Alexander Kinglake: I had two copies and rid myself of both, even though Jan Morris called it one of the best travel books of all time, because I can’t bear straight travelogues, especially antiquated ones.
  • The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner: I DNFed her previous novel and decided against reading her latest; why would the one in between suit me any better?
  • The Men Who Stare at Goats and Them by Jon Ronson: I enjoyed two of his books pre-pandemic, but when I look at these now, they just seem dated.
  • Pharmakon by Dirk Wittenborn: Bought at The Works in Whitby in 2016 and kept all these years because I was amused by the sales stickers layering up from £2 to £1 to 50p to 25p to 10p. Yes, I bought it for 10 pence. But after a decade, I accepted that I was never going to read this 400+-page novel about an invented drug that induces happiness but then leads to a murder.

As I was going through my groaning set-aside shelf, especially, I had to be honest with myself. Sometimes I misjudge and request a review copy, then for years feel guilty about not reading something that turned out not to be for me. Or I might have liked something enough to get 50–100 pages, or more, into it but then ran out of steam. My choices for these (80+) books were: resume it right away; shelve it with the TBR, either with my progress marked with a slip of paper, or with the intention of starting over at the beginning; or call it unfinished and get rid of it.

The rainbow bookcase! Have you ever made one of these?

This will be an ongoing task and an evolving system, especially if I ship the remainder of my books over from the USA in June. They’ve been in boxes in my sister’s basement – before that, my dad’s storage unit; before that, my parents’ garage – for far too long. It’s time for a final prune and a reunion with the rest of their family across the pond.

Whether all this honing and rearranging of my collection has been successful, time will tell: my end-of-year stats will reveal whether I’ve managed to read more from my own shelves. I reckon I’ll enjoy the mental athletics of remembering where I’ve moved a book and finding something to fit a seasonal challenge or personal goal. Now that the books have new neighbours, I might be tempted by my long-neglected Four in a Row project again. And for 20 Books of Summer, the only parameter will be that they must be from my own shelves.

How have you kept your TBR under control recently? Do you also have to ‘trick’ yourself into reading your own books?