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Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Not Dewey

My friend, Not Sarah Farrah, recently said she alphabetized her nail polish. Seems odd since it's so obvious arranging nail polish by color is the only logical way. (I don't own any nail polish, so who am I to say?) Then I thought about my book shelves and how I recently reorganized them. These two are in my dining room.

Find brown, blue, red and black bound books here.
Aqua, green and white titles are shelved right next to the bike parking. Easy.



(My favorite book, by color of the spine, is The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.)

6 comments:

The Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The Mike said...

I have so many reactions as I read and process this post that I think I am still processing them as I write this, so I beg the reader's indulgence.

My first reactions is, "How the heck do you find anything?" This was followed closely by thinking how cool they looked on the shelves arranged by colour, "but how the heck do you find anything?"

The parenthetical is magical, indeed.

Then, I began to reel as some of the deeper intuitions made themselves known. Often, when I refer to something I've read, I can find the passage in a book because I remember how far into the book on which face and on what part of the page it appears. Of course, if I am working from a different imprinting, I am totally lost, and I'm forced to look it up based on where in the story something happens. My spatial recall is much stronger than my temporal recall.

Arranging books by colour, then, seems to make sense. The visual cue of the colour of the spine (don't call me yeller) is but another way to organise one's own books. I have my own system for books in my home that is not DD, LoC, nor ISBN. Some book shops have absolutely no system and encourage perusal. The idea to arrange books by colour is meshing visual cues, both temporal and spatial, spatial because one can view many, if not all, of the colours at one time and move to choose a direction almost immediately based on the field of view and temporal because the spectrum of colours, as we most often see it, happens in a sequence, as are the books arranged on the shelves.

But now, I'm getting all eggheady (I'm very happy that indulgences are not sold here).

Leave it to Not Stacy to find a way to make reading even more attractive. I love your system. I think it's magical.

(I edited this post for grammar, punctuation, and content.)

Olivejenny said...

iDeclare, Miss Stacy, those are the most beautiful bookshelves I have evah seen!

If only every book shop were as stylish!

susan said...

I am so excited that I got a "shout out" in your blog!!!! :)

AND I love your beautiful colorwheel bookshelves. I think I would arrange mine the same way if they weren't all in rubbermaid bins in the basement. I only have out what I am reading right now. How will you arrange your books on the new ipad? :)

Buddy Teaster said...

becca does this and it makes me nuts. embarrassing when im trying to find a a book to give away, my biggest frustration with the kindle is that i cant do that, and i have to try to remember if it's brown or how tall it is.

Lise said...

Oh, The Year of Magical Thinking. So...difficult, painful, beautiful, sad, ugly, tough, and good.