TITLE:  Phantoms on the Bookshelves

AUTHOR:  Jacques Bonnet

TRANSLATOR:  Siân Reynolds

DATE PUBLISHED:  2010

ISBN-13:  9781906694586

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DESCRIPTION:

"This enchanting study on the art of living with books considers how our personal libraries reveal our true nature: far more than just places, they are living labyrinths of our innermost feelings. The author, a lifelong accumulator of books both ancient and modern, lives in a house large enough to accommodate his many thousands of books, as well as overspill from the libraries of his friends. While his musings on the habits of collectors past and present are learned, witty and instructive, his advice on cataloguing may even save the lives of those whose books are so prodigiously piled as to be a hazard... The Phantoms on the Bookshelves ranges from classical Greece to contemporary Iceland, from Balzac and Moby Dick to Google, offering up delicious anecdotes along the way. This elegantly produced volume will be a lasting delight to specialist collectors, librarians, bibliophiles and all those who treasure books."

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REVIEW:

A memoir-type collection of hodge-podge book collection musings.  For a specific audience  - those with vast libraries and/or those with an interest in (mostly) French literature.

... Part 1.

It started last weekend when I resolved to finally catch up with a few overdue tasks, which -- go figure -- suddenly also restored at least a semblance of order to my office.  (A colleague with whom I'm working very closely, and who is just about the only person permitted to get away with this sort of comment, had recently -- before "social distancing", of course -- wondered aloud, "What happened here?  This used to be an office once ...")

Part of the decluttering of my office involved finally inventing shelf space for all of last (and this) year's, as-yet unshelved books, a large number of which had taken residence stacked up on my office floor -- which in turn, eventually, also went a fair way towards decluttering my living room, where yet-to-be-shelved books had started taking up more and more space in the same manner.  In furtherance of their shelving, a while back I had decided to finally tumble to creating a TBR cart: something I'd so far resisted, because there's no place in my home where it can have a permanent space, so whenever it's not actively being consulted, it will have to live wherever it is least in the way at any given time.  But as a temporary expedient, and to whittle things down to a selection of those books I really do want to get to sooner rather than later, it may end up serving very well ... and at least, we're off to an excellent start in that very direction.

As per usual, "decluttering" actually started with yet more clutter, when I piled up all my stacks of unshelved books on my living room floor to then sort them by "audiobook / print edition", "read / TBR", genre, etc., in preparation of actually shelving them.

(For the record, this is obviously NOT the way these books had been stored up to then.  In fact, this is a sight so horrible to my eyes that it's the fastest and best motivator to get me to find proper shelving for my as-yet unshelved books as quickly as possible.)

I decided that in an effort to further prioritize my selection, I would stack my new TBR cart with:

* A few "comfort watching" DVDs;

* Audiobooks yet to be listened to (regardless whether I've already read the books in question or not); and

* Print editions of TBR books that I do not also have as audobooks.  Mostly these are books newly acquired in 2019 / early 2020, but I ended up going back to my shelves and pulling a few books from there as well.

And hooray, this way I actually managed to find / create shelf space for all those books not going into the TBR cart, and to stack my cart with a selection of books I'm truly looking forward to reading soon!

Now onwards and upwards to the rest of my apartment ... (ah, the things that social distancing makes us do at last!)

One of the results of this week's Big Decluttering Project was that rearranging my Golden Age mystery shelves finally allowed me to put up my Margaret Millar omnibus volumes in the upright position and right next to each other.  And look what I found!  I love it when that happens ...

How do you order the books on your shelves?

Umm.  It's ... complicated.  Or at least, multi-layered.

1st sorting layer: Genre / Topic

* Classics and LitFic

* Mysteries and Suspense (everything from Golden Age and classic noir to contemporary, including spy fiction, except for historical mysteries)

* Historical Fiction (including historical mysteries)

* Supernatural & Speculative Fiction (fantasy / sci-fi, supernatural, horror)

* Mythology

* Nonfiction: History and Biography

* Nonfiction: (Popular) Science

* Nonfiction: Law and Economy

* Nofiction: Philosphy

* Nonfiction: Dictionaries

* Nonfiction: Travel and Geography

* Nonfiction: Artist Biographies (classic rock and movies / theatre)

* Nonfiction: General / Other

* All things Los Angeles / Southern California

* Cookbooks

* All things cats

* Coffee table books

2d sorting layer: Language and Origin / Setting

* North America (USA and Canada)

* UK (with a separate "Scotland" shelf)

* Ireland

* Germany

* France / French Literature

* Hispanic Literature (both European and Latin / South American)

* Portugal and Portuguese Literature (including Brazil)

* Italy

* Scandinavia / Nordic Literature

* Eastern Europe

* Russia

* Africa

* Caribbean (English and French language; Hispanic Caribbean see above)

* Asia

3d sorting layer, version (a): Alphabetical by Author

E.g., in the shelves for North American, Irish, Scottish, French, Hispanic, Portuguese, Italian, Eastern European, Russian, African, Caribbean and Asian literature; ditto some of the nonfiction shelves.

3d sorting layer, version (b): By Era / Topical Association

E.g., in the shelves for English and German literature (roughly, by historical era), nonfiction history (ditto) and most of the other nonfiction shelves, as well as all of my mystery, fantasy / sci-fi / supernatural / horror, and cookbook shelves (mystery: by sub-genre, e.g., British Golden Age, classic noir, etc.; speculative / supernatural fiction: by type (fantasy, etc.); cookbooks: by region and publisher).

This includes dedicated shelves for my favorite authors (e.g., Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, the Mann family, etc.). 

Even without having entire dedicated shelves to themselves, books by the same author are kept together; series are generally in publication order.

3d sorting layer, version (c), as well as a sub-layer by expedience to all of the above: As shelf space allows!

The more frequently this occurs, the more it is obviously a sure fire indicator that the acquisition of more shelf space is becoming a matter of urgency.  (Problem: There is only so much more shelf space that I can add -- read: not a whole lot.)  Currently most prevalent on my "Scandinavian literature" and speculative fiction and supernatural shelves ... as well as on the dedicated Shakespeare shelves.

(The photos in this post are, incidentally, from the time of my major shelf reorganization a year ago.  Since then, things have, alas, generally taken a ... decidedly less organized turn yet again.)

If you go to Quebec City, take the time to go to the Morrin Centre. It was a prison, a school, and then a library. I highly recommend the tour.

This gem of a book presents the history of the place. It is split into three sections, not counting the introduction by Louise Penny, and each section is written by a different author. The first section is the history of the prison; the second the history of the school, and the third of the library. The book is nicely illustrated and jammed with facts not only about the Centre but about Quebec City as well.

Very nice.