August 3, 2002: Bookshelf
With a thunderstorm pouring down on Manhattan, I took some time to alphabetize my bookshelf. Sure, I know most of you are probably saying, "you mean it wasn't already alphabetized?", but I just didn't have a chance to do it until now. Putting all the books in order really gave me some insight into what I've been reading the last five years. Some authors take up a lot more space than others. For instance, the largest rectangle highlights the books of Paul Auster, my all time favorite author. Other large rectangles: Hemingway, Graham Greene, Kundera, and Borges. I noticed some other strange details: I own three copies of Hamlet, and two copies each of Heart of Darkness and Gravity's Rainbow. Why would I have bought more than one?
Comments
You can click on the picture for the big view- but be warned- it's 350k.
Okay, you can loan me one copy of Gravity's Rainbow, I want to read it. Did you ever finish it?
Nope- I once got about 120 pages into it though.
Gravity's Rainbow...
I love the big view picture. In fact, if you are reading this, you MUST click the big view picture. Jake, can I hire you to index all my books? I think there are about 2500 of them.
No problem- I'll alphabetize them for $500, and photograph them for $100 more. For $650, I'll speculate on your interests and character based on what I observe in your bookshelf.
Your filing system is very interesting. Mine is broken down by:
- British
- American Contemporary
- Classics
- Films
- The most recent stuff I've bought
- Bad chick lit
- More movie books
- McSweeney's
- Mass market paperbacks
- Text books
- Cooking
- Old magazines
Alphabetical is hard for me. Sometimes I don't feel that Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City should be next to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, but actually that doesn't sound too bad. Nor does the idea of Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic next to Guy Hocquenhem's Homosexual Desire.
Hmm.
Two copies of Gravity's Rainbow and none of Mason & Dixon, which was not just obscenely long but also eminently readable.
I remember how freaked out Mike was that I had Bersani's Homos in the top shelf. He was like "what's up w/that?"
Books like "Homos" and "Homosexual Desire" have the great benefit of being eyecatching and double-take-prompting.
In my shelf I have a new copy of the early homosexual study: The Riddle of 'Man-Manly' Love: The Pioneering Work on Male Homosexuality by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, an openly gay lawyer in late 1800s Germany. It's an interesting study, if a bit old, and turns many heads when the title is caught by the wandering eye.
My shelves are a haphazard mess. I know where everything is simply through odd categories of topics. Typography books here, philosophy and thought books in that case, science books here, trendy graphic design here, architecture in the smaller room, literature in that bookcase, fine arts in theirs, and rare and antiquarian in this bookcase. I really need to catalogue. And I really do need more shelves...
I'd like to go into the business of arranging people's libraries. I think that would really contribute to people's lives...
so the silver box on the bottom, is that where the porn is?
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