i have done a fadiman and sat down to organise my books. that is to say, the ones at home, but also taking into account those travelling home even as we speak. i have complained about the school shelves preventing me from organising books according to size rather than taste, but in fact, after four years, i've got sloppy with non-categorising and don't really know how to organise books anymore.

so i begin by getting my shelves down to (and i only have ten, alas)

1) modern european / modern classics except british and american
2) modern british
3) modern american
4) british and american classics before 1900.
5) lit crit and associated disciplines
6) poetry
7) children's books 8) oversized / coffee table / graphic novels
9) chinese classics
10) my favourites at close range for grabbing.

this last is very important

although - i get into trouble right away.

i started heaping the french and the russians and just about everyone else together on shelf 4: and suddenly i see boris pasternak sandwiched between d.h. lawrence and henry james, chekhov next to fielding and medieval mystery plays, and austen and hardy snuggling up to tolstoy. moreover, medieval mystery plays gave me pause, and i decided to relabel one shelf medieval - eighteenth century british + greeks and romans, and a second shelf 19th century british, french and russian. together they make up the vague "classics of world lit" shelf. that wasn't too difficult.

next i consider the huge number of c.s. lewis's and thomas mertons, most of which belong to my dad, and decide that i do NOT want a shelf that says spiritual / inspirational / religion, and i wonder if i could class these under letters, autobiographies and biographies - i do have an awful lot of those - i especially love letter collections - and then much of thurber's letters and essays might go on that shelf. (i remember the gigantic harrison kinney biography that poach and cindy gave me is also wending its way home, and space must be left for that.) i prefer to keep my thurber collection together, and as a matter of fact, my thurber collection is large enough to stand alone. and of course, thurber does deserve a place of honour on my shelves. but tiny rooms with insufficient shelves will forever be the bane of my life. i suppose thurber would like pressing his back against the biographies - he is wickedly good at portraits, afterall. anyway there is nowhere else for him to go i won't have him under modern american and i do not think he should be on the children's shelf, even if he has a childlike delight in punning - he said specifically he has only written two books for children in his life. besides which most of the children's books in the house are in the children's library cupboard in the living room downstairs, where i am free to retrieve anything i want, so i'm not sure i should keep a children's shelf in my own room, except those i can't do without.

so far, so good. but i do not think i can spare another shelf for the biographies, so perhaps i'll have to combine the modern american with the modern brit, which annoys me because i don't like louis macneice and a.s. byattcozying up to nicholson baker and phillip roth. i have a strict british / american divide. i solve the problem by following anne fadiman's example: putting all the americans together, without reference to period, and only sorting british lit chronologically into medieval-renaissance, 19th century, and anything after that. good.

and here i stall on somerset maugham. clearly, he belongs with the modern british, especially when i've already decided on the three-country 19th century approach, which doesn't leave the 20th century much standing room. and yet i don't really want maugham, or kipling or conrad for that matter, in the modern british collection. for one thing, i'm quite sure that i don't mean modern in anyway but its everyday sense, i.e. recent, and that means if i can remember it coming out, and if not, if it was published in the last 15-20 years. a.s. byatt, graham swift and jeanette winterson, yes. but not maugham, not even golding. i wonder if a good guideline for "recent british" shelf would be - the author's still alive, or, something my pater wouldn't have heard of. in anycase, perhaps i now need two shelves of post-1900 british, one for martin amis and julian barnes and such, and another for maugham and ballad and greene? this makes me think that when i say modern european i really only mean dutch czech and italian, with stray eastern european writers and for that i need two shelves to properly reflect my interests. yes, i am definitely running out of shelves.

i decide that my chinese collection is pitiful so they might as well join my mother's not inconsiderable collection (which i can pretend is mine, if i'm always taking my books off her shelves. *grin* ) this frees up one shelf i wanted, but this is no good because now i dearly want a shelf for essay collections. there simply is no room. i wonder what other books i might cram together. lit crit and poetry can't be shifted much. next up short stories by david leavitt and david guterson. (funny i've always thought guterson american and leavitt british but i do think it's the other way round.) i would like all the short stories to go on one shelf, regardless of nationality or period. hello woman, remember? no more shelves! right.

i wonder - if it is more sensible to organise by geography within genres or the other way round? and taking into account periods. and authors within genre of course...whatever it is, the solution lies in acquiring more shelves. and when i move next year - NO DON'T THINK ABOUT THAT NOW. *task at hand* *full attention*

so at the moment i have

1) medieval to 18th century brit lit + greek and roman lit + mythology + other continental medieval-renaissance texts
2) 19th century british, french and russian
3) recent british
4) biography/memoirs/letters
5) poetry
6) all american authors and periods
7) modern european
8) frivolous important things including pratchetts and wodehouses
9) criticism and essays
10) personal favourites for quick snatching and comfort reading

now i'm two shelves short for 11) oversized and a new category: 12) non-literary non-fiction. plus i have 13) frivolous unimportant things that i would get rid of if possible - eg peter mayle and jeffery archers and other such relics from my idle ignorant youth.

duplicates that you guys are welcome to mail me for:

unbearable lightness of being. both seen lots of shelfwear.
selected letters of thurber - paperback

this is all i have turned up so far, though doubtless tomorrow i'll find a few more. anyway i sometimes keep two copies so i can have one at home and one in charlottesville.

i do have multiple copies of various nootebooms to give or lend.

i shall go sleep. second attack tomorrow, and possibly a whole new scheme of arrangment by then.