Reorganizing My Books

A bibliophile's idea of a good time

There’s no such thing as too many books, but there is such a thing as not enough space to put them.

That was my dilemma until recently when a new neighbor listed the above bookcase for free to whomever could get there first to pick it up. Challenge accepted.

Clearly, I got the bookcase and then immediately set out to reorganize my fiction collection. I’d done it a couple years ago, but in the meantime I’d acquired more books, and those books were haphazardly lying atop other books in my attempt to maintain the alphabetized order of all the novels and story collections.

Once I got this bookcase, I filled it with all the A and B authors and then worked to shift and rearrange all the rest of the books through the Z authors. It took a few hours, which I divided into two days, so I could also clean all the bookcases once the books were removed from each shelf and repositioned onto different shelves.

I decided to place my Dickens’ collection in its own special area, and all the Pulitzer winners of fiction are stored in a different bookcase in another part of my house, but the remaining fiction books (plus a few relevant nonfiction pieces) are now reorganized and reshelved alphabetically by authors’ last names.

The sticky notes indicate the books I have yet to read — yes, there are many. I have far more books than I’ll ever be able to read, and that’s the way I like it.

The books lying on their sides are ones I’m currently reading. There’s another pile of them on a table that’s not pictured.

Most of these books are catalogued in an app on my phone, too. I need that to help me avoid buying or acquiring a book that I already own. That used to happen too often until I began using the app. Unfortunately, a year ago or so, my phone completely died, and I lost all that I’d saved on the app, so I had to start over when I got a new phone. It’s time consuming to put all these onto the app, but I have most of the fiction books stored there — totaling more than a 1,000 books. All told, with the nonfiction books I own, the plays and poetry books, and a decent-sized collection of YA books and children’s books, I have well over 2,000 books in my home. It’s probably over 3,000 if I’m honest.

My home literally is a library.

Since finishing the reorganizing of all these books, I stopped at Susan’s used bookstore in Aurora, NE, on my way home from my interview at NTV south of Kearney for the Good Life program, and I bought another book. Susan’s policy is that you get a free book every time you stop and purchase a book, so I came home with two more books to add to my ever-growing collection. Fortunately, I managed to place them where they belong on the shelf without having to redo the entire process. Thank goodness.

I will attempt to abstain from buying more books for a while. Aww, who am I kidding?

I delayed sending this in the hopes that I’d know when my interview would air, so I could include that for anyone interested in viewing it, but I still haven’t heard, so I’ll send this out now and send a quick update when I know (if I know in advance).

Until next time. Upgrade to paid status to read the next chapter of “Last in the Class.”

I’ll be sharing new stuff soon as I make more progress on the next book, but I’ll keep sharing “Last in the Class” until the end of the novel. Once you are a paying subscriber, you can access the archived posts and read all of the novel as well as the other things I’ve shared only with paying subscribers.

Tammy Marshall