At the Guardian, Talking Amongst Your Shelves: A novel way to organise your books is to use different titles to spell out new phrases…
My favourite example was ‘the 18-year-old blogger responsible for the Stuff I’ve Read blog quite sweetly “raids her mum’s library” to come up with the wonderful Somewhere A Cat Is Waiting/To Kill A Mockingbird/In A Dark House/Bad Kitty’.
Just with my novels I can come up with “Slow River: A Blue Place, Always.” Or, hey, there’s “And Now We Are Going to Have a Party With Her Body.” Later, after a beer, I’ll see if I can come up with nifty stuff made of historical research titles.
Nicola Griffith 
I like this game! Here we go < HREF="http://flickr.com/photos/simulakra/2867609836/" REL="nofollow">(with photo)<>:Fly by night, Dreamhunter, Tripping to Somewhere: Undertow, Dangerous Space, Stranger Music, Voyages, Natural Disasters, Different Seasons, The Realm of Possibilities. Nightwalker, Stay, No one belongs here more than you.
I’m going to have some fun with this one. More later.
Wasn’t there a theory that had something to do with rye and some kind of an affect on people’s minds that this was what caused the histeria about witches. Or a mold on rye or something? I can’t quite remember. ANy one else remember anything on this? If so, it doesn’t seem that Nicola’s theory would be too far-fetched.I never tried the books on the shelves thing. Not sure I could get my obsessive mind to allow me to do this as my books are by catergory and auther. To make sentences, I would have to move a book out of its place! :)duff
OOPS! Put notes on two different topics together. Sorry. Probably too much marijuana. For my pain you see.duff
karina, jennifer–yep, it’s a fun time-suck :)duff, you might be thinking of dancing mania, which swept Europe every now and again in Europe during the middle ages. Some people theorise that this was caused by eating grains (rye is, I think, particularly susceptible) contaminated by <>Claviceps purpurea<>, aka ergot. Others think it was a kind of mass hysteria. My guess is it was a combination of mass hysteria and an as-yet-unidentified third agent.
This might be a fun game if you have two dozen books, but we have hundreds, and most of them are alphabetized by author (and also if they have or have not been read).
patti, my guess is that the average reader of this blog has books numbering in the high hundreds or even thousands.So do you really alphabetise your books? (By author?) We used to do that, but then we starting grouping by genre, then by mood (even colour, and size). I find it’s important to shake up the categorisation every couple of years to rediscover lost treasures.
OK–not ALL of our books are alphabetized. And we do have the cooking, wine, motor sports, travel, etc. sections that aren’t mixed in with the others. And come to think of it, we do have thousands, not hundreds. I discovered that when I was unpacking countless boxes after our move earlier this year.
So maybe you could risk playing a little. See what happens.
I arrange them by cliques. So Julio Cortázar (who wrote short stories and novels) is side by side with Alejandra Pizarnik (a suicidal poet who used to hang out with Cortázar both in France and Argentina when they were alive). Your work and Kelley’s share a home, too. The short stories go on translation walks three or four times a week, but return safe and sound by midnight.The clique-sorting thing doesn’t have to relate to the authors all the time. There’s months when theme rules the library and I decide to throw a music party, so all books with music in them get an invite and a funky hat. Or I cast participants and stage the “End-of-the-world by Drowning” play on the shelves. When a book makes me mad, I place it near some author who I imagine would drive it crazy if they were forced to sit through a 12-hour flight together.Maybe these are just my ways to evade the fact that I’m alphabetically challenged and on bad days must sing the whole ABC in order to figure out where do L or Q go.
I like the notion of making the irritating books sitting with the, well, irritating books.
Oh, and I meant to day, I absolutely empathise on the alphabet thing. I have to say it to myself to know what letter goes where.
This one is called < HREF="http://flickr.com/photos/simulakra/2870054340/" REL="nofollow">AutoErotica:<>Hello, Groinhear me outA BLIND MAN CAN SEE HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU This is a classified ad for a beach resort called < HREF="http://flickr.com/photos/simulakra/2870054220" REL="nofollow">The Dispossessed:<>Original Fire, Gendered Bodies, Paradise Lost.Massive Change, Processing, New World/New Words.Equal Affections. Sinners Welcome. This is the poster for the < HREF="http://flickr.com/photos/simulakra/2870054108/" REL="nofollow">Willful Creatures Tour:<>Willful Creatures, Crossing Open Ground.A Company of Fools, Dancing at the Edge of the World.
You’re right about the time suck factor Nicola. I saw once I started pulling a few things out that I’m going to have to wait a couple of day to play with this. The more books the better to choose from!Those are cool, Karina.
karina, book poems! I like the first one best.jennifer, yep, total time suck. [evil cackle…]
This is called < HREF="http://www.flickr.com/photos/simulakra/2870314985/" REL="nofollow">The French Revolution:<>THE lesser BLESSED little gods IF THIS BE TREASON OFF WITH THEIR HEADSAngel Wing Splash Pattern Without BloodThis is called < HREF="http://www.flickr.com/photos/simulakra/2870315219/" REL="nofollow">CURIOSA: for a theory of unified physics:<>Reading Pictures, Footnotes, Artforms in Nature, Science, Order, and CreativityTHE PHYSICS OF THE BUFFYVERSE
Oh, how I love my books!
My favorite is still the one you came up with: < HREF="http://www.flickr.com/photos/simulakra/2870451211/" REL="nofollow">And Now We Are Going to Have a Party With Her Body.<>
Hey wait a second— that appears to be cheating. Mine doesn’t have any type on the cover…
There’s print on the belly band, and then if you fold back the first flap, there’s print there–but you have to turn the box face out (same with the collection). So not cheating, exactly…
Nicola, I’m glad your definition of “cheating” is as flexible as mine. *smiles innocently at Jennifer*
Ok, it’s not really cheating, I agree. I’d forgotten about that inside type. The collection does have that very small type on the side. I’m tempting to cheat myself….
I fooled around with this some today. I’m just getting started. See what you think of < HREF="http://gallery.me.com/tennjd#100482&view=grid&bgcolor=dkgrey&sel=3" REL="nofollow">these sorts<>.
jennifer, I like these. And they look so much more artistic without the jackets…
I’m pretty tough on my books as you can see on some of them. And you can tell which ones I haven’t read by how not banged up they look. A few of them survived a fire that once burned a place I lived.I’m surprised to see some of the books I have around that I haven’t read and probably never will. During my last move, I was persuaded to take several boxes to the thrift store. Later I discovered that some of the wrong boxes were taken. I knew it was a mistake to get rid of those books.Anyway, I’ve put up < HREF="http://gallery.me.com/tennjd#100482&view=grid&bgcolor=dkgrey&sel=5" REL="nofollow">two more in this gallery<>.