“I’d like to buy a book, please” “What are you interested in?” “A blue one!”
My wife does this to our books and it drives me nuts.
- “Where’s The Art of War?”
- “It’s in the black section”
One year her mom and I reordered them by author last name while she was away on a work trip. Took her 5 seconds upon returning home to notice it was different and she was furious.
Put yourself in her shoes. If she derives joy from a colorful sorting of the books, it’s likely any other sorting would cause some annoyance/anguish (however minor). She would feel this way each time she laid eyes on the bookshelf.
On the other hand, a colorful sorting would only negatively affect you when you are actively looking for a book. I’m guessing that’s far less often than she merely looks at the bookshelf.
A compromise could be that she sorts the books by color and then by authors name. Not the most efficient sorting method for finding books, but would save a considerable amount of time compared to no author name sorting at all.
Edit: alternatively, a quick Google image search of the book name would tell you all you need to know to quickly find it in a colorful sorting.
Or book jackets. That’s what I’d do. Gives an opportunity for creative outlet, too!
This is the smartest solution. Order and aesthetics simultaneously!
it’s ridiculous and insane.
I know, right. It’s crazy to me that people need to actually read the spine of a book they own in order to know what it is. Like, don’t you know exactly what it looks like? It’s your book. In a personal library, it makes sense to group books by how similar they look.
In a personal library, it makes sense to group books by how similar they look.
you do you, crazy man. keep telling yourself this shit makes sense lol
On the other hand, a colorful sorting would only negatively affect you when you are actively looking for a book.
No, unfortunately, it would remind me every time that I looked at it that I had somehow married someone who thought this was acceptable.
I did this to all my parents’ bookshelves when I was about 8. For the next 45 years they blamed me every time they couldn’t find a book.
This is a far more rational order than the chaos that is our bookshelves:
And that is after significant weeding.
We did try with the paperbacks, but we decided “fuck it” after a while.
I might be weird, but I like the look of a full but chaotic bookshelf.
Putting the wooden doll up one shelf with the other humanoid figures would be a good start.
It took me a while to figure out what you were talking about. That’s not even supposed to be there. That’s my daughter’s. I have no idea why she decided to put it there apart from the aforementioned “fuck it.”
mildly satisfying and infuriating at the same time!
Wildly Satisfuriating.
My life IRL
I think that is mildly satisfying. To be fair: I haven’t seen a single book shop sorting the books alphabetical. A book shop isn’t a library.
I’ve never seen a place selling books not have them organized alphabetically! They might not be libraries but they have an interest in their customers being able to find what they’re looking for
Sorted by genre, then alphabetically.
Yup, just like a library
But you can’t deny they’re not libraries.
no, they’re in the business of selling BOOKS, not swatches of colour for the fuckin’ shelf.
"Hi I’m looking for a copy of HG Wells’ “The Time Machine”
“what colour is it?”
“ah. nevermind. fuck this place.”
A book shop isn’t a library.
I don’t get what you mean by this. Customers can go into both looking for something specific or seek out a particular author. If there’s no logical ordering how can customers find what they’re looking for?
Could it be… Aesthetics?
Nothing like drinking a hot tea on a stormy afternoon and curling up with a good book of orange!
A nice blue book on a hot days is quite refreshing
Wait until your mood turns dark.
Perhaps a forbidden and zesty dark purple tome.
Finally! Something mildly infuriating!
Interior design suppliers let you place orders like “6 feet of purple books.”
One of the last renovation shows I watched just put the books backwards for a “clean look”
Wait what? Can you even do that? A clean look? What!?
Most designers are from over function.
I just looked at that books by the foot website and their example of reversed books is really gross looking. I’d rather have all white books than have them reversed. It just looks closer and gross.
Booksbythefoot
I’m in the mood to read something orange today.
“Meh, who ‘reads’ books? It’s pretty!”
Store shelver probably.
“The books are all broken, none of them connect to social media.”
One of my favorite stories is from 2011:
“A magazine is an iPad that does not work.”
That baby is now 13, maybe 14 years old.
At least 14, maybe 15 - because it was 1 just a bit over 13 years ago (I’m sure if the baby was nearly 2, it would’ve been labeled as such)
They just focus on the dollar value
Reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMGJLZDLpUg
i love it. searching through old books at a resale shop is a great setting for randomness to explore
My mum used to do this to my books in my room and I hated it
When I was a child, I once knocked every book off every shelf in the house.
Because I had 6 books in alphabetical order on my little shelf in my room. My mother kept rearranging them in as close a rainbow distribution as possible… I asked her to stop many times, but ultimately decided if you’re going to mess up my shelf, I will mess up yours.
Surprisingly this tactic worked, and they didn’t make me clean up the books by myself, they did most of it.
Their idea of “organizing” the books is “well most of the books in that series are close to each other, but a bunch of other random ones are mixed in, and entire genres have been rearranged many times so who knows what books we even actually have”
They have a similar way of organizing dvds. It’s infuriating.
But do they actually read and watch the books and dvds? Cause my mom doesn’t read, so books are just decorations to her
They barely watch dvds anymore since they’re spending like 100/mo on various streaming subs.
They’ve had a book in hand for as long as I can remember, nowadays it’s a Kindle but their disorganization has been present as long as I can remember, too.
Last year I watched their dog while they were out of town, and I reorganized their dvd collection in alphabetical order, keeping the various series together.
In less than 6 months it was essentially back to complete chaos. And in that time,according to them, they barely watched any dvds, they just looked through the shelves a bunch to figure out what they have.Why that requires them to pull movies out and out them back in a different spot, I’m not sure.
Direct action > nonviolent protest, got it.
I was in a similar situation. It was the only time I got into a serious fight with my mom. The only difference was that I was an adult already, had around 1800 books, and sorted them by genre, author and series order.
I don’t understand the logistics of possessing 1800 books. That is so many books. Did you live in a library?
My parents have between 1,000 and 3,000 books… Even they aren’t sure.
Last time they were neatly arranged I was a child.
Right now they have 3 floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stacked as densely as possible, 3 books deep, with as many stacked In and laying on top as can fit Ina rectangle 10ft tall, 4ft wide, and 18ish inches deep.
Plus a handful of waist high shelves, multiple moving boxes filled up that haven’t been emptied since they moved in2017 and a ton scattered all over the house…
They have more fantasy/Sci fi books than every library in a 50 mile radius combined.
I still have less than 30 books to my name since most of mine are digital, but I’ve been going to half price books looking to get physical copies of everything.
One side of my bedroom wall was a built-in bookshelf. We’re talking about 4m in length and 2m in height. Some shelves had double-stacked books.
But you are right; the logistics are nearly impossible. I moved out of my parents’ house in the mid-90s, but they still keep most of my books there for me. I have my own house and family now, but my wife threatened divorce if I “cluttered” our house with all the books. My hope lies in my kids inheriting my love for reading and bringing over my books themselves.
my wife threatened divorce if I “cluttered” our house with all the books.
Storms, that would drive me nuts. Then again, I don’t have 1800 books. 😅
What’s an Op Shop?
It looks like a charity shop that I would see around here. They also organise clothes by colour which makes more sense but still, I’m only looking for my size and in a charity shop the clothes are all random so availability is more important.
It’s apparently what they call a thrift store in Australia and New Zealand. They sell used goods for charity.
An Op Shop is Australasian slang for a thrift store/charity shop. Not to be confused with Opshop, a New Zealand rock band formed in 2002.
It’s a shortening of opportunity shop
