Rearranging and Culling My Library
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 how 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?
Bookish Bits and Bobs
It’s felt like a BIG week for prize news. First we had the Booker Prize longlist, about which I’ve already shared some thoughts. My next selection from it is Trust by Hernan Diaz, which I started reading last night. The shortlist comes out on 6 September. We have our book club shadowing application nearly ready to send off – have your fingers crossed for us!
Then on Friday the three Wainwright Prize shortlists (I gave my reaction to the longlists last month) were announced: one for nature writing, one for conservation writing, and – new this year – one for children’s books on either.
I’m delighted that my top two overall picks, On Gallows Down by Nicola Chester and Silent Earth by Dave Goulson, are still in the running. I’ve read half of the nature list and still intend to read Shadowlands, which is awaiting me at the library. I’d happily read any of the remaining books on the conservation list and have requested the few that my library system owns. Of the children’s nominees, I’m currently a third of the way through Julia and the Shark and also have the Davies out from the library to read.
As if to make up for the recent demise of the Costa Awards, the Folio Prize has decided to split into three categories: fiction, nonfiction and poetry; the three finalists will then go head-to-head to compete for the overall prize. I’ve always wondered how the Folio judges pit such different books against each other. This makes theirs an easier job, I guess?
Speaking of prize judging, I’ve been asked to return as a manuscript judge for the 2023 McKitterick Prize administered by the Society of Authors, the UK trade union for writers. (Since 1990, the McKitterick Prize has been awarded to a debut novelist aged 40+. It’s unique in that it considers unpublished manuscripts as well as published novels – Political Quarterly editor Tom McKitterick, who endowed the Prize, had an unpublished novel at the time of his death.) Although I’d prefer to be assessing ‘real’ books, the fee is welcome. Submissions close in October, and I’ll spend much of November–December on the reading.
Somehow, it’s August. Which means:
- Less than a month left for the remaining 10 of my 20 Books of Summer. I’m actually partway through another 12 books that would be relevant to my flora theme, so I just have to make myself finish and review 10 of them.
- It’s Women in Translation month! I’m currently reading The Last Wild Horses by Maja Lunde and have The Summer Book by Tove Jansson out from the library. I also have review copies of two short novels from Héloïse Press, and have placed a library hold on The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-eun. We’ll see how many of these I get to.
Marcie (Buried in Print) and I have embarked on a buddy read of Cloudstreet by Tim Winton. I’ve never read any of his major works and I’m enjoying this so far.
Goodreads, ever so helpfully, tells me I’m currently 37 books behind schedule on my year’s reading challenge. What the website doesn’t know is that, across my shelves and e-readers, I am partway through – literally – about 90 books. So if I could just get my act together to sit down and finish things instead of constantly grabbing for something new, my numbers would look a lot better. Nonetheless, I’ve read loads by anyone’s standard, and will read lots more before the end of the year, so I’m not going to sweat it about the statistics.
A new home has meant fun tasks like unpacking my library (as well as not-so-fun ones like DIY). As a reward for successfully hosting a housewarming party and our first weekend guests, I let myself unbox and organize most of the rest of the books in my new study. My in-laws are bringing us a spare bookcase soon; it’s destined to hold biographies, poetry and short story collections. I thought I’d be able to house all the rest of my life writing and literary reference books on two Billy bookcases, but it’s required some clever horizontal stacks, special ‘displays’ on the top of each case, and, alas, some double-stacking – which I swore I wouldn’t do.
Scotland and Victoriana displays, unread memoirs and literary reference books at left; medical reads display and read memoirs at right.
I need to acquire one more bookcase, a bit narrower than a Billy, to hold the rest of my read fiction plus some overflow travel and humour on the landing.
I get a bit neurotic about how my library is organized, so questions that others wouldn’t give much thought to plague me:
- Should I divide read from unread books?
- Do I hide the less sightly proof copies in a stack behind the rest?
- Is it better to have hardbacks and paperbacks all in one sequence, or separate them to maximize space?
(I’ve employed all of these options for various categories.)
I also have some feature shelves to match particular challenges, like novellas, future seasonal reads, upcoming releases and review books to catch up on, as well as signed copies and recent acquisitions to prioritize. Inevitably, once I’ve arranged everything, I find one or two strays that then don’t fit on the shelves I’ve allotted. Argh! #BibliophileProblems, eh?
I’ve been skimming through The Bookman’s Tale by Ronald Blythe, and this passage from the diary entry “The Bookshelf Cull” stood out to me:
“Should you carry a dozen volumes from one shelf to another, you will most likely be carrying hundreds before you finish. Sequences will be thrown out; titles will have to be regrouped; subjects will demand respect.”
What are your August reading plans? Following any literary prizes?
How are your shelves looking? Are they as regimented as mine, or more random?
Some 2022 Reading Goals
First of all, I need to give some proper attention to the books on my set-aside shelf (nearly 40 of them), preferably clearing this in January – while also catching up on review copies from last year and continuing with the January releases.
Thereafter, I’d like to concentrate on backlist books for the year. This may seem ironic given that I review new ones on the blog and for various other outlets, and that I’m going to be featuring my 20 most anticipated titles of 2022 in a post tomorrow, but I have a few reasons for wanting to focus on older material.
One is that backlist reading consistently produces new favourites. Another is that every time I shelve in the library’s back room rolling stacks, I see novels that I’ve always meant to read, or that look fantastic, and think, “I really should borrow more from in here” … then forget all about them and place holds on (sometimes disappointing) new books instead.
A final reason is that, as I pack up my library in preparation for moving and get a good look at the ~500 unread books all over again, I hope and expect that I will be inspired to read them – and also to revisit some long-neglected favourites. (Of course, I may also cull some before the move, which would be fine.) The plan is to eventually replace our fleet of white Billy bookcases with built-in shelving either side of the decorative fireplaces in a few rooms of the new house.
As always, I’d like to get to more classics, doorstoppers and literature in translation (I own hardly any translated titles, so most of this will have to be from the library). I’ll participate in all the usual annual blogger challenges plus any new ones I can fit in, including Annabel’s #NordicFINDS – I’m currently reading Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder to review later this month.
I’m sure to follow a similar set of literary prizes as last year, including the Young Writer of the Year Award, the Barbellion Prize, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Wainwright Prize, and (to a lesser extent) the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Women’s Prize and the Booker Prize. And, of course, I’ll be carefully monitoring the later stages of the McKitterick Prize judging after sending off my own longlist for the unpublished manuscripts. These prize lists plus various review copies will ensure I have a regular influx of recent releases to counterbalance the backlist reads.
Brand new or backlist for you in 2022?
Filling One Last Bookcase
Earlier this week I inherited a beautiful antique bookcase from an online friend* who, we learned only recently, lived just 20 minutes away. She has to shed some furniture to move to London, and very kindly thought of me. This is the last major item we could possibly fit in our house, but I was happy to accept because it’s so much nicer than any of our Ikea shelving units. It has the kind of mahogany detail that looks like it could belong on a ship’s wheel.
My goals for the extra shelving space were to be able to keep genres together, to eliminate double stacking where possible, to put all books out on display instead of having some away in an overflow crate, and perhaps to free up the tops of a couple units for knick knacks, etc.
It was a multi-step process undertaken with military precision. Can you tell I used to work in a library?
- Reincorporate Short Stories into General Fiction
- Double-stack the already-read Fiction in the bedroom, leaving the more presentable books at the front; create a Signed Copies area
- Move Poetry in with Classics, double-stacking and putting some books on their sides to make more space; create a Classics priority area, with one book per month chosen for the rest of 2018
- Move oversize Science and Nature, Graphic Novels, Children’s Books, and Coffee Table Books (which, because they’re buried under magazines and newspapers on the coffee table shelf, we never look at) onto the bottom shelf of the new bookcase
- Move all Life Writing (biographies/memoirs), which had been split across a few rooms, onto one bookcase in my study
- Add a selection of Travel and Literary Reference to fill the built-in shelves of my desk, joining Reference and Humor
- Integrate Science and Nature, previously kept separate, into one bookcase
Unread fiction is mostly on the hall bookcase, with an area on the bottom shelf for upcoming projects so I can see what’s awaiting me. I’m keeping these in rough date order from left to right: bibliotherapy prescriptions, possibilities for Reading Ireland month, novellas for November, etc.
However, there are a handful of annoying hardback and trade paperback novels that are just that little bit too tall to fit here, so these have formed a partial shelf on the antique case. I’ve also set aside there the book(s) that I think might be included in my Best of 2018 list and a growing stash of Wellcome Book Prize 2019 hopefuls.
You would never believe it, but I think I need more books! Good thing we have a trip planned to Wigtown, Scotland’s Book Town, for the first week of April. In any case, it’s better to have room to grow into than to already be at capacity or overfull. I can always reshuffle as time goes on if I decide I don’t want any double stacking upstairs or if we ever manage to bring back more of my library from America.
From Book Riot I got the idea of making a personal “hold shelf” of books you own and have been meaning to read. So far I only have four books set aside, arranged as a sort of buffet atop the hall bookcase. Perhaps later I’ll replace this with a full shelf on the antique bookcase. Other ideas for the empty space there would be showcasing my most presentable fiction, or creating a favorites shelf. This was suggested by Paul and corroborated by The Novel Cure, which suggests pulling out the 10 books you love most and are likely to turn to for inspiration.
*If you’re on Instagram, you must check her out. She is a #bookstagram pro: @beth.bonini.
How do you organize your bookshelves?
Settling in, aka Organizing My Bookshelves
We moved into our new rental house a week and a half ago. For most of that time my husband has been away in Devon for work, which created the perfect opportunity for me to have free rein in organizing the place – clothes, framed photos, toiletries, desk supplies: yeah, sure, all that; but really, my focus was always on the books.
I thought I had the perfect plan: general fiction in our bedroom; classics and literary reference books in the spare room/office; and the rest in the lounge on a big bookcase divided into one shelf biographies, one shelf nature, one shelf religion, and one shelf travel. This system quickly broke down. For one thing, we actually have three or more shelves’ worth of nature books, more than a shelf each of most other nonfiction genres, and way more fiction than would ever fit on one small Ikea Billy.
The result has been some inevitable dividing and jumbling. Much as I didn’t want to do so, I’ve had to put some books on their sides on top of rows, and I had to double stack the religion shelf. I made three shelves of nature and travel combined, but put the travel guidebooks and the nature field guides in separate places. Fiction ends up scattered in several places, including priority stacks on our bedside tables plus one shelf devoted to novels I mean to get to soon.
Ultimately we’re going to have to get another bookcase, but I’m pretty pleased with the results thus far. Here’s a peek:
Lounge unit: three shelves of mixed nature and travel (alphabetical by author); one double-stacked shelf of religion.
Bedroom bookcase: general fiction (all but one of which I have read!) with areas on the bottom shelf for oversized graphic novels and science/nature books. On top are various nature field guides.
Spare room/office bookcases. Left: classics and poetry (Dickens set on top); right: top shelf of priority fiction, second shelf of biographies, third shelf of literary reference and generally nonfiction (divided by some Penguin paperbacks), and a bottom shelf of more literary reference and biography.
Overflow area (on office desk shelves): travel guides; mixed reference and humor; paperback fiction that doesn’t fit elsewhere.
I’ve been enjoying my walks into town along the Kennet & Avon canal. Up until Tuesday we were without Internet at home, so I had to make daily excursions to the lovely public library to do my editing work. It’s great watching life on a canal change: some houseboats seem permanent, while others drift in and out from day to day; the swans and ducks are always on the move, looking out for their next wheaten snack; and every time I walk the tow path I notice something new, like a large stand of hops. Home brew, anyone?
After several years of not having access to our own outdoor space, we now have as much garden as we could ever want. The back door lets out onto a large stone patio, followed by a grassy area with a rotary washing line, a huge combined storage shed and summer house (too warm now, but should be a perfect reading spot next month); an emptied pond, some pear and plum trees and a bench; blackcurrant and raspberry bushes; a second shed (currently inaccessible due to a wasp’s nest); a dilapidated vegetable bed; a compost heap; a cuttings area; more grass; some scrub; and finally the secluded gate onto the canal path. Every time you think you’ve gotten to the end, it just keeps going. At some point it’s going to represent an awful lot of work, but for now I’m just in awe of the space and the sense of freedom.
Looking back from the summer house.
We’re having the mildest of heat waves here in southern England, but the signs of autumn are poking through – especially the ripening fruit you see everywhere. We have lots of ready blackberries in the garden; add to that some foraged plums, pears and apples and we’ll soon have the makings of a hearty crumble with which to welcome our first guests this weekend.
What’s your strategy in organizing your bookshelves?
Does it feel like autumn where you are?
How Many Books Is Too Many? (to be reading at once)
You can never have too many books. But it’s entirely possible to have too many on the go at one time, or too many on the physical to-read pile (as opposed to the virtual to-read list; mine currently numbers in the thousands over at Goodreads). I was prompted to think about this at the end of 2014, when I went around our flat and counted all my owned but unread books that I still wanted to read. At that point I counted 155.
One of my reading goals for 2015 was born: I would attempt to read more of the books I actually own – at least enough to keep pace with my secondhand book buying habit. So yesterday afternoon, expecting to be heartened by my progress, I did a recount. Result? 180.
WHAT?! The number went up! Gah!
It must be that all-paperbacks-for-£1 shopping spree we did at the bookshop in Henley-on-Thames…and then I brought some books back in my suitcase on our last trip to America…plus a few more review copies have arrived.
There are books all over the flat: in the spare room, on the bedroom bookcase, on the bedside tables, on the hallway bookcase, on a big four-shelf case in the lounge, on desk shelves, even in an overflow area on the shelving unit of board games, jigsaw puzzles, CDs and DVDs.
And that’s not counting the dozens of approved e-books awaiting download on NetGalley and Edelweiss, and the others already on my Nook and Kindle e-readers. It’s nigh on impossible to say no to free books, after all.
Okay, so I’ve established that I have a book hoarding obsession that extends into both the print and electronic realms. (It’s no surprise I worked for a website called Bookkaholic for two years, is it?) But is this really such a problem? It’s somehow comforting to know that I’ll never run out of reading material.
A related concern, though, is this: Am I reading too many books at once? I have 13 on the go at the moment (8 print and 5 electronic). Especially since I got my Nook, I find that I’ve developed a kind of ADHD when it comes to books. It’s so easy to click from one book to another that I sometimes don’t stick with one for more than a chapter at a time. Sometimes, if I’m in a rut, I’ll read the first few pages of 10 or more books before I manage to settle on one.
Up until college, I was the kind of person who faithfully read just one book at a time. Since then, though, I’ve become convinced of the merit of having two or more on the go at a time: at least one novel and at least one work of nonfiction, maybe with some poetry thrown in. If you have nonfiction from very different genres – for instance, a spiritual autobiography and a nature book; or a travel book and a foodie memoir – you could read multiple nonfiction books at the same time.
The benefits are multiple.
- If you’re bored with one book, spend time with another one. You can always go back.
- Sometimes a pairing is fortuitous – what you’re learning in one book will have bearing on another, or the same historical figure will turn up in both.
- The psychological burden of having a tall stack of books staring you down may encourage you to read more.
Yet there are disadvantages.
- With novels and short story collections, you may get characters and storylines mixed up if you have too many in your head at once.
- You’ll make progress in all the books more slowly.
- If you get gripped by one, you might abandon the others temporarily.
Your turn:
How many books do you read at once?
What do you think is an ideal number?
How do you manage your (physical or virtual) to-read shelf?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 