"A word after a word after a word is power" - Margaret Atwood

BRIDGET WHELAN

A blog for readers and writers

A blog about the stories we tell each other and how we tell them...

Sunday 4 April 2010

How do you organise your collection?

By Colour?
I'm almost tempted. I spent many, many hours boxing up the living room books over the weekend as Sam the Painter is coming in while we are in Spain. When they go back on their newly painted shelves perhaps I will have a bash at a rainbow filing system. (Only that would mean Zola's Rome in blue would be separated from the red bound copy of Zola's Paris. Would they pine? ).
Elvis Costello ordered his record collection geographically - west coast to east coast - and my eldest says he has a similar system for his already extensive library.
Any other - non alphabetical - method for books, vinyl, CDs, DVDs....?

3 comments:

Martha said...

I have just finished a book entitled The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez. One of the protagonists had a collection of thousands upon thousands of books which spilled out of the living room, into his hallway, in his bathroom, in his bedroom. These were all meticulously filed; no feuding writer could be together, no authors from different eras, it was all very complicated. When his index accidentally caught on fire, disillusioned, he packed his crates of books and set off out into the back of the wilderness. There he got a local man to put up a steel frame and fashion the walls of his new house out of those very same books!!
I say alphabetical!! Keep it simple:-)

BRIDGET said...

Campaign for REVERSE alphabetical and I might agree (no prizes for guessing why).
Thinking about Paper House...how about separation according to political philosophy. George Orwell, left of the fireplace, Kinsley Amis in a small box to the right, prior to being shipped out to the Oxfam Bookshop...Or maybe world view should be the deciding factor with Mills and Boon authors on one side of the room and Irving Walsh on the other, glowering ...

BRIDGET said...

Thanks!