This post originally appeared at Grasping For the Wind in March 2010, and was written in response to one of John Ottinger’s Inside the Blogoshere questions: How do you organize your library?

Around a month ago I went through a major overhaul and purge of my collection, something years overdue. Space was definitely becoming more and more of an issue for me as my shelves had come to be packed two or three deep in places (and just what was behind that outer layer?), and stout towers of hardbacks and trades had begun to grow on the floor in front of my bookcases. What shred of organization was left from my last resorting — which happened to be at a time when I bought and installed yet more shelves — was being obscured and diluted by new purchases. What I needed was not only a rethink of where certain things should be shelved, but a culling of the herd.

Anyone with a serious book buying habit knows that, realistically, they will never be able to read everything they buy. It’s a sobering and unwelcome fact that only a fraction of all those great used book finds from the library or thrift store or local indie shop — all those exciting impulse purchases — cannot be gotten to in a normal human lifespan. So, either you become a firm believer that the Singularity will come along and grant you some sort of extended lifespan (possibly turning you into a book-reading cyborg), or you get real and get rid of some of the stuff you’ve accumulated over the years.

For me that meant coming to terms with all the people I was never going to be. I’d never be that guy quoting Aristophanes and Euripides, or the one who rereads the highlighted sections of Seneca and Cicero as part of their bedtime ritual. I’d never get to the massive stack of Ellery Queens gathering dust on my lowest shelf, never grapple with the modern drama or nineteenth century poetry I had squirreled away behind the SF paperbacks. I’d never be the polymath I liked to imagine myself turning into in my twenties when I bought all these books — books bought almost as if to justify the energizing yet fantastical premise that somehow, someway, I’d triumph over time and human nature and read everything.

So, the cardboard boxes came out, divided into ‘cold storage’ and ‘adios’ categories. Cold storage books are borderline, books that I think I may have some use for in the next five years or so but don’t feel should be part of the main collection — these boxes get stacked in closets, or wherever I can find space and don’t have to look at them. The adios pile is further divided into books I think I can resell, and books I plan on giving to Goodwill (our local Goodwill has a pretty thriving book circulation business going on, and is a large part of why I have too many books in the first place). The big goal was to reduce and organize my existing shelves so they didn’t have multiple rows and piles of books on them — in short, to make my shelves look nice, for a change, and to render them more functional.

I tell myself, too, when getting rid of books that should I ever regret their loss, another copy can be easily obtained. And when e-book reader technology settles down and becomes more mainstream (and less proprietary, Amazon and Apple!) I envision another culling, this time to get rid of books that I don’t particularity need to experience as physical objects, or books I don’t like the look of on my shelves. For the reason of freeing up space alone I can see e-books as being a great adjunct to a bibliophile’s collection. [and now that I have a Kindle this is very true -- I no longer bother to keep most public domain titles that aren't of sentimental important or collectible condition]

Because space is the issue, in more ways than one. An it isn’t just about having space for the books you want to keep, but space to arrange them logically. Having bookshelves of different sizes and widths limits what can be displayed where — if I want all my books on the US Civil War to go on the same shelf, it has to be on a taller one, to accommodate some of the larger format books I have. But, unlike my books on ancient and medieval history, the Civil War doesn’t fill a whole shelf — so what goes next to them in the space left over? Not having the luxury to leave the shelf blank to ‘grow into,’ I try out some different, related, eras. I have too many books on nineteenth century warfare and colonialism to fit on that shelf, but my stuff on WWI squeezes in OK. But wait, don’t some of these books belong on the other side of the room, in the Military History and Strategy Section? And what of the paperbacks?

It’s more of a logistical nightmare than it seems, at first, and I soon arrived at a point in the proceedings where compromises had to be put in place. So, some of my organization is completely idiosyncratic, and based on the size and format of the book more than other factors (I now have several ‘miscellaneous’ shelves consisting of very rough groupings of smallish trades, bound together by size and the fact that they don’t sensibly fit in elsewhere). What I don’t bother with is alphabetizing, either by title or author. I clump books together by subject and author, but have few large collections of any one author (Gene Wolfe being the exception — his books have recently graduated from having one shelf, to two). Fiction and non-fiction rarely go on the same shelf, with the lone exception of some historical fiction that is filed with its related subject. Similar authors tend to go together — Harold Lamb and Robert E. Howard share a shelf, for example. I also have a shelf, the one nearest to my chair, that is filled with ‘to be read’ items, the books I’d like to get to in the immediate future. Needless to say, it’s pretty full…

I find that I have far more mass market paperbacks than I can adequately shelve. I do have a shelf that is close to perfect for these, a Betamax shelf bought from a local video store in the 80s, when they transitioned away from the old format. Its my longest serving shelf, and holds mass markets nicely, but has nowhere near the space I need for all of them. I’ve taken to stacking extra paperbacks in a few spaces I’ve opened in my other shelves, in rows two deep. A compromise with my ideal, to be honest, but I think that a collection will never achieve any sort of perfect stasis. Book collecting is an ongoing process, and finding space and trying to impose order on a mass of books that posses as much emotional significance as they do intellectual, is a running gunfight with entropy, where the only pause exists in order that both sides may reload.

And maybe that’s part of the fun of having so many books in the first place.

As a kind of follow-up to my unsettling experiences as chronicled in ‘No Books For You,’ I’ve bloggated an ode to the act of browsing for books in actual, physical, honest-to-goodness brink-and-mortar bookstores. You remember those — the places we used to get all our books back before the Jetsons became reality and robots started delivering books (that we don’t even remember ordering) to us in person, all without us ever having to leave our stim-couches or take the feely- domes off our heads.

But ‘Books Best Appreciated in Their Natural Habitat‘ also includes some shocking revelations about Your Humble Narrator. About my vile, venal, and voracious ebay habits that have nearly single-handedly ruined the publishing industry, the viability of book sellers nationwide, and the common man’s faith in humanity.

While I am attempting to reform this pernicious behavior (really), I have never stopped appreciating the irreplaceable experience real bookstores can provide.

Not to over-emphasize the aesthetics of the whole thing, but browsing a book store is like having a civilized meal in a restaurant while online browsing is like eating a big mac in your car stuck in five o’clock traffic. The first is a public and collaborative act, one in which all the senses are stimulated; the latter is private, distracted, and utilitarian. Both can achieve fullness, but only the first offers real enrichment.

Anyway, the whole thing boils down to us being doomed as a society and species if you don’t go out right this minute and buy something at a real damn bookstore.

The other day I had to go get a new battery for the lawn mower, so naturally I ended up at the local Goodwill buying books. Got some good stuff; non-fiction ranging from bios of Lindbergh and Teddy Roosevelt, to a book on Gurkhas, something about Mallory and Everest, and one about Ernest Shackelton’s Arctic Expedition. Also Ishi in Two Worlds, about the last Yahi Indian who came down out of the hills one day in 1911. Then there was a copy of Simon Winchester’s excellent The Professor and the Madman to replace the one I sold a few years ago. It’s a great story about one of the original contributors of the Oxford English Dictionary, who just so happened to be institutionalized. Highly recommended.

But my big find in non-fiction was a copy of a book I’ve wanted for a while, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, one of those inspirational writing books people are always talking about. I’ll be sure to mention how I like it. Top prize in the weird category goes to Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun, a New York Times Bestseller, which at first I thought was satire. Seems it isn’t, but certainly looks interesting nonetheless.

And then there was fiction. I like to find better copies of books I own as replacements when I can, and I did that with two by Asimov: The Foundation Trilogy and I, Robot (my prior copy of which really ought to be tossed in the trash). I was pleased to find that Spider Robinson Heinlein novel I’ve been hearing about, Variable Star, too. I grabbed copies of two lit-fic novels that looked interesting, Burroughs Running With Scissors and Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, the later of which I bought almost purely on the virtue of it’s title alone, which references one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes tales, ‘Silver Blaze.’

I nabbed some interesting historicals as well. Justinian, by H.N. Turteltaub (Harry Turtledove) will go nicely with a group of books I’m amassing on Byzantium and plan to get to his summer. And Patrick Rambaud’s The Battle, based on notes for a planned novel by Balzac, focuses on Napolean’s defeat at the Battle of Essling. And I finally picked up a decent copy of Gore Vidal’s Burr, which I’ve heard great things about and am eager to read, despite liking neither Mr. Vidal or Mr. Burr.

But the capper on the whole thing was finding a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses. Now, I don’t know exactly when I plan to get to reading it, but surely I have less excuse now than before. But the real reason I dub this copy of Ulysses as the capper to my buying expedition is the laugh I got when I found the bookmark inside. Of course, one expects to find a bookmark still in Ulysses, one of those books not often started and even more rarely finished, but I had to chuckle a bit when this most formidable and intimidating of books was marked, on page 15, by a ticket stub to The Phantom Menace.

I defy anyone to have this kind of experience online — I hadn’t even heard of a third of these books before I saw them on the shelf.

I was book hunting recently — actually I was running errands of various sorts, but it’s often the case with me that a trip to the grocery store or Home Depot morphs into a book-buying expedition of some kind — and I hit one of my regular spots, the local library. Now, it’s only recently that I started actually checking books out of the library again, being a confirmed buyer of books (think I made that clear already — yea?) but I’ve been popping in to buy books at libraries since I was old enough to spit without getting any on me. Libraries, at least the ones near me, are basically the cheapest used book stores around — and they don’t just sell actual library books, but stuff people donate, and you have no idea what you’ll find (recent purchases include hardbacks of Stephen King’s Night Shift and Bachman Books, and Robert Heinlein’s JOB, all of which were in pristine condition and had not been through the system).

But on my last trip to the library there were no sale books. I went in with the usual tunnel vision and headed straight for the sale shelves, only to find them replaced by a rather diffuse display of new release hardbacks and a man reading a newspaper. So I looked around — they’ve moved the sale stuff before, after all — but all my lovely 25 cent mass markets and broken-in 50 cent trades were nowhere to be found. So I did something I’d never done before, I asked the man at information for information.

No, we don’t sell books anymore, he said. Not just us, but all the Baltimore County Public Libraries — all our books now go to an online seller. Oh, and by the way, he continued helpfully, a little ice will help the swelling from the kick in the head you just received.

I suspect there are even a few book lovers out there who might not think this is a big deal — the books can be had online (maybe), and so what if they’ll be more expensive. But I’ll tell you why it’s a big deal to me.

As I kid I went to the library a lot. My mom took me. I’d get stacks of stuff, it was a great place to find out about all sorts of authors and types of stories I would have never been exposed to. But I also bought books — a couple of bucks was enough for a nice-sized handful, at least. It started me on the habit of buying, sure, but more importantly of owning. Bibliophiles know there is a real difference between borrowing and owning, and I was really proud of my fledgling collection of battered and peeling ex-library paperbacks. I discovered at least as many authors browsing the sale shelf as I did the stacks, and I discovered even more about how loving and respecting books can change the way you see things.

But for a kid in a similar position today that’s not there, any more. Sure, he’s got amazon and all the other online stuff — but would he even acquire the habit of wanting to own books? Leaving aside the big difference between online buying and browsing (surely another blog post), where’s his chance to discover the thrill of picking out paperbacks five for a dollar, or finally getting to own a favorite library book when it goes out of circulation?

For me, digging through those shelves, discovering something unexpected or new, buying better copies of what I had or getting multiples of favorite books so I could give them to someone else, is a pleasure I’ve never lost from the time I was a kid. It’s just a shame it’ll be that much harder for other people to develop the habit now, at least around here.

And from a purely selfish point of view — I still want my damn 25 cent mass market paperbacks!

Recently, I have read two interesting essays on books, the first of which is ‘Of Bibliophilia and Biblioclasm’ from Theodore Dalyrmple writing for the New English Review. In it he talks about the sacredness of books — at least for those that love them — and he takes as his starting point the second essay I’m recommending, written in 1936 by George Orwell about his time in the book trade, ‘Bookshop Memories’ — which I was excited to read as it was an experience of Orwell’s that clearly served as part of the inspiration for events in Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

Anyway, Dalyrmple talks of the pleasures of browsing second-hand book shops while Orwell, on the other side of the counter, laments the cranks and weirdos he encountered working as a bookseller. Orwell says that his time in the bookshop actually killed his love of books as physical objects — after seeing them stacked in their thousands, freighting them back and forth like so much cargo, and choking on their dust for long hours, books lost much of their material magic. It’s a funny and interesting article, which includes a short exchange with one customer that suggest the much talked about death of the short story may not be such a new phenomenon and, indeed, much of the habits and interests of people shopping for books seems fairly similar all these years later. However, not all of Orwell’s pronouncements stand the test of time, as in: “the combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller out of existence as they have squeezed the grocer and the milkman.”

Of course, Dalyrmple is writing from a time when exactly that has happened. He talks about the changing face of second-hand shops although, in his words, they still remain “one of the few indoor public places where a person may loiter for hours without being suspected of any serious ulterior motive.” He talks of the pleasures of browsing such places, of the thrill of discovering something completely unexpected — an experience that the internet, no matter how revolutionary for book buyers, can’t replicate.

Sadly, Dalyrmple also remarks at the seeming change in attitude for younger buyers toward bookshops — recounting admittedly anecdotal data that young people have a more utilitarian attitude toward books on the whole, coming in to shops to look for only what they want and leaving if they don’t find it. Is it that they don’t see the book as a sacred object — don’t get the tactile urge of the bibliophile to paw through unexplored piles of books just for the sheer joy of doing so? It may be, but it may be nothing new, for as Orwell says at the start of ‘Bookshop Memories’ about his initial prejudices in working in a shop: “the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people.”

Which all leads to the notions of books as worthwhile physical objects — at least for those of us that have not worked that feeling out of ourselves as Orwell had. Dalyrmple recounts his fondness for inscriptions in his book, especially in books given from one author to another, and he muses on how these inscriptions are a window on a forgotten way of feeling and thinking. Finally, the notion of the destruction of books:

Books, even without association with anyone known, have an almost sacred quality in any case: it is necessary only to imagine someone ripping the pages out of a cheap and trashy airport novel one by one to prove to oneself that this is so. If we saw someone doing it, we should . . . think him a barbarian, no matter the nature of the book. The horror aroused by book burnings is independent of the quality of the books actually burnt.

I agree, as does any book lover. Toward the close of this essay,  Dalrymple also voices a notion that is always paramount in my mind when I browse for used books or take the time to ponder my own collection: that we book owners are trustees of books, and represent just one phase of a book’s existence. With that in mind, and given his fondness for inscriptions, Dalrymple has “taken to inscribing all the books I read, in a bid no doubt to outlast my own death.” I’m considerng doing the same.