Reorganizing the Library

As Kevin pointed out on our wedding website, I reorganize my library a couple of times a year. This is mostly because I accumulate books constantly and occasionally need to move everything around so it all makes sense again. And sometimes I need to get a new bookcase, which is what happened this weekend.

I try to wait to get new bookcases until I can mostly fill them. Empty bookcases are just too tempting for me. I have to fill that space as quickly as I can, which results in me buying far too many books to quickly. This time I waited too long. Even with a fourth bookcase, my library is overflowing. Just barely - I found space for all my books except one. But I certainly didn't expect to fill it that quickly.

I am pretty proud of the organization, though. There a few oddballs, but almost everything makes sense. So I'm sharing it with you. Because this is my blog, and what I say goes.

Here's the first bookcase:

This is essentially the children's bookcase. It has a bunch of my books for kids, along with tons of books that Kevin's mom recently took out of storage. That sudden influx is why I filled up a whole bookshelf so quickly.

Starting at the top we have children's poems, fairy tale anthologies, and mythology

The next shelf has Shakspeare, Nancy Drew, old scout handbooks, and comics

Then we get to one of my favorite shelves. I know there are a lot of duplicates here, but I don't really care. I love that this section takes up an entire shelf. We have Laura, Jo, Anne, and Alice giving way to Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood. Literature by and about women for all ages!

The next shelf is lots of little kids books. A lot of them are falling apart, but this is where you'll find Dr Seuss and Winnie the Pooh. Again, there are actually a lot of duplicates here, including three copies of The Little Prince.

The last shelf is the "Grab in case of fire" shelf. I grew up in Colorado, and the fire seasons there taught me that I need to know what I would take if I needed to evacuate quickly. The answer is this shelf. It's closest to the door, and it has all of our yearbooks and photo albums.

The second bookcase is off in the corner, so it gets a lot of random things and books I'm slightly less excited about. It's sort of the catch-all case

The top shelf has my grandfather's books, Kevin's dad's Garrison Keillor collection, and miscellaneous literature that didn't fit anywhere else or warrant its own shelf.

The second shelf is "Crime, Autobiographies, and Memoirs". Okay, those don't really go together, but the number of books makes it work.

Then we get to sexuality, psychology, and history of science. Feynman probably belongs up with the biographies, but I like him on this shelf. Also, he fits better here. On the far left are the playbills of all the plays, musicals, and ballets I've seen.

Next comes history and historical fiction. Also books I had to read for school. It's sort of a theme.

Finally we get to Kevin's college textbooks.

The third and largest book case is basically science fiction and fantasy. I have a lot of that.

First comes science fiction. Plus a little bit of leftover historical fiction, mostly because Mary Doria Russell writes in both of those genres, and I didn't want to split up her books.

Then we come to the first of many fantasy shelves. If I had to grade it, I'd probably give this shelf a B. I liked these books, but they aren't among my favorites. We'll get to those later. This shelf has A Song of Ice and Fire, The Lord of the Rings, and anything pertaining to King Arthur.

Then we come to children's and young adult fantasy. Here you'll find Narnia, Tortall, Earthsea, and Oz.

Then we get to the "C" shelf. I like these books fine, but they all have their problems, too. Or they didn't fit anywhere else (that's a common theme). The bulk of this shelf is The Dresden Files, which I do intend to finish, and Sword of Truth, which I gave up on years ago but can't quite bring myself to get rid of.

The bottom shelf is my college textbooks. It's really similar to Kevin's college textbooks because we took so many classes together. I held on to a few more than he did, though.

Finally we get to the favorites bookcase. This is the one that probably sums me and my interests up the best.

The top shelf is Neil Gaiman with bonus Patrick Rothfuss. It's a good thing Rothfuss isn't too prolific yet. He can still fit here.

Then we have the Discworld shelf, which is something every good fantasy fan ought to have. There was a time when Gaiman and Pratchett shared a shelf, and I thought it was impressive that I could fill an entire shelf with only two authors. Of course, that was back in my first apartment when I only had one bookcase. I've come so far since then.

Here we have Discworld overflow, because there's a lot of those books. They get to share space with my horribly mismatched Harry Potter collection.

Then we arrive at the true display of my geekiness: The Whedon shelf. This has everything pertaining to Buffy, Angel, and Firefly. It also has my Middleman comic book, because it seemed to fit here. Also Of Human Bondage, which makes sense if you've seen the fourth season of Buffy. And if you're as obsessed as I am.

Finally there's the vampire shelf, with bonus zombies. Yes, Twilight made it onto my favorites bookcase. Don't judge me.

Then there's this small and completely random bookcase, which does double duty as a cat bed.

The top shelf has my "stack" of books to read. I'm actually impressed that it's not completely full at the moment.

Then there's all this random crap. I barely even know why I own any of these books. But there they are.

And that's my library! None of you are half as excited about this as I am, so I'm impressed if you made it all the way down here. Have a gold star. I'm just going to sit here and delight in everything having a place, because that's not going to last very long.