Organizing the cave. Or more specifically, the basement library.

I’ve been considering other categories to group the books in. It’s often difficult for me to limit what a category encompasses. It was part of the fun of keeping Half Price Books organized. Was Danielle Steele a romance author? Did V.C. Andrews belong in mystery or horror? When is a book sociology, anthropology, ethnic studies or history? As the manager of a store I got to set the limits. Mostly. Horror novels featured supernatural events therefore V.C. Andrews didn’t belong there. Except every other HPB filed her there so I couldn’t move her out. Thank heavens she died. The appearance of V.C. Andrews novels from beyond the grave allowed me to feel comfortable about her continued placement in the Horror category.

Shelving fiction at home isn’t an issue. As long as I keep all the books by a single author in one place I’m happy. Subcategories such as science-fiction, horror, mystery, etc aren’t too important to me. It’s my library. I’ve only got books in it that I want or need. The only fiction category I’ve set aside is the Lovecraftian shelves. I get a silly thrill looking at the books there and thinking “Ooooh. Concentrated creepiness.”

It’s all the non-fiction that I’d like to get into some kind of pattern. So far I’ve got the MAH books grouped in one place and the Animal Kingdom in another. For the rest – I’m starting with broad categories of Business, History, Art and Photography. I can already see myself running into problems with those. Business is Nizzibet’s category. History will encompass sociology, crime and religion. Everything that’s not Business, Art and Photography really. Once I’ve got those books caged up I can think about subcategories. That leaves videos and comics/drawn books as orphans to be shuffled into the space the other books aren’t.. Computer books too. Those are mostly in place already. No thinking needed there.

I’m expecting that the process of organizing the books is going to help me organize the rest of the clutter. Skook will sleep through all of it. Nizzibet will be at work today. Jaydogg will be in his office. The only likely interruptions will be keeping laundry in motion and calling The Mother at 11:30. Should be a busy day.