Friday, July 1, 2016

Follow Friday - The Poet Philemon Died in 262 B.C.


It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and a single Follow Friday Featured Blogger each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:
  1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
  2. Follow the Featured Blogger of the week - Books, Dreams, Life.
  3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
  4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
  5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
  6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
  7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
  8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!
And now for the Follow Friday Question: Tour your bookcase for us!

I'm not sure whether to interpret this question as asking for a tour of all of the bookcases that I and the redhead share (which would be a rather substantial undertaking), or just one of them (which would still be a substantial undertaking, but slightly less so). Because the question uses the word "bookcase" in the singular, I am leaning towards interpreting this to mean a tour of one of our bookcases, although I am going to cheat a little bit and give a tour of one bank of bookcases - a cheat I rationalize because all of the bookcases in that particular set are all screwed to one another for stability. I am definitely excluding all of the books I have boxed up waiting for the day when the redhead and I have a home that is big enough for sufficient shelf space to house them all.

So, taking this set of bookcases from left to right, top to bottom, the first thing that is notable about them is that the couple of shelves at the top left don't actually have any books on them. Instead, they hold the overflow of our board game collection from the primary bookcase where those are shelved. The board games are not organized in any particular manner - while we own a lot of board games, we don't own so many that we need to keep them in order or risk losing track of where they are.

Running to the right across the top shelves is a large portion of our graphic novel collection, including complete runs of Saga and Rat Queens as well as a substantial portion of Sandman, Order of the Stick, and Girl Genius. These are mostly organized alphabetically by the primary writer's last name and then for each writer, in either series order or in alphabetical order by title. Careful observers will note that several graphic novels are not properly shelved, but instead are laid across the top of a row of books. These are there partially because they are graphic novels that I have not yet read, but also because the top shelves are not large enough to accommodate all of the graphic novels. I will need to either box up some books or rearrange some shelves to make additional space. I haven't decided which to do yet, or even if rearranging the books on the shelves will work.

On the far right of the top shelf are some books that are more or less out of place, and aren't shelved in any particular order. Most of these are reference works that technically should be placed on the bottom shelf of this bookcase, or on a completely different shelf entirely. Unfortunately, several of these books are simply too tall to fit on other shelves. This slight bit of disorder bothers me, and I'll probably do something about it at some point in the future, but right now there's just no avoiding it.

The bulk of the bookcase is taken up with general fiction, arranged alphabetically by author last name, and within each author, by series order or alphabetically by title.Other than that minimal organization, basically most types of books that I own are found in this section: Science fiction, fantasy, history, law, science, and so on. The only real connection these books have with one another are that they form something of a long-term to-be-read pile. I've have read a few of the books that are shelved here, but of those, I read them so long ago that I'd need to read them again in order to be able to express cogent thoughts on them. The rest are just waiting for me to read them.

On the bottom shelves I have several Time-Life series and some reference books. Most of these are on the bottom shelf as a concession to gravity. I have found that if I shelve these volumes on higher shelves, the weight of the books causes the shelves to bow. The usual remedy for bowed shelves is to periodically flip the shelf over in the bookcase, so that the shelf is slowly bowed back to straight. Unfortunately, these shelves are designed in such a way that the shelves cannot be flipped so that isn't possible. Consequently, the heavy book sets get shelved on the bottom shelf.

To the right of the main bookcases are two small, ancillary bookcases that I have stacked one on top of the other. These hold more general fiction, organized alphabetically by author last name.

There are two piles of books on the shelves that deserve special mention. On the middle shelf, on the right hand side, there are books stacked up in front of the shelved books. One group consists of books and stories that were published in 2015 that I pulled aside to read for consideration as nominees for the 2016 Hugo Awards. The other group consists of books that have been published in 2016 that I have set aside to read for consideration as nominees for the 2017 Hugo Awards. I have not yet read the books in these stacks - in the case of the books I set aside to consider for the 2016 Hugo Awards, I simply didn't get to them in time before the nomination period closed - but they are near the top of my to-read pile.

On a final note, I should point out that my bookshelves are something of a dynamic habitat. The books that sit on them right now (especially in the to-read sections), are likely to move elsewhere in the reasonably near future, to be replaced by other books. Once in a while, I get ambitious and entirely reorganize my books - if I had taken pictures and done a book tour of this set of bookcases a year ago, it would have been entirely different.


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