a handful of dust...

"Marko Amnell" <marko_amnell.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:7c1c159a-bfc2-45a3-b501-a778c0fb564e@t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...

> . . . History is now
> the largest group. That would not have
> been true 10 years ago. Also, I was
> a bit surprised that I have 400 books
> of philosophy; I would have guessed
> maybe half that. Otherwise, it was pretty
> much how I expected it to be.
>
> At 40 books per shelf the total number of
> books comes to about 2,520.

Allergy and disposable money may decide
whether your next project is glass-fronted
bookshelves (to minimize dust accumulation)
or a catalogue. I kept a card catalogue since
the age of about 10, maintained this index in and
after college, and put it into a computer database
about 1985, still maintained. So I can see the
total inventory now is just over 5000 volumes (and
another 1000-odd papers in binders. Yes, I too
have run out of shelf space, and two more parcels
(9 vols.) arrived last week. . . )

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

Don Phillipson wrote:
> "Marko Amnell" <marko_amnell.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:7c1c159a-bfc2-45a3-b501-a778c0fb564e@t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>
>> . . . History is now
>> the largest group. That would not have
>> been true 10 years ago. Also, I was
>> a bit surprised that I have 400 books
>> of philosophy; I would have guessed
>> maybe half that. Otherwise, it was pretty
>> much how I expected it to be.
>>
>> At 40 books per shelf the total number of
>> books comes to about 2,520.
>
> Allergy and disposable money may decide
> whether your next project is glass-fronted
> bookshelves (to minimize dust accumulation)
> or a catalogue. I kept a card catalogue since
> the age of about 10, maintained this index in and
> after college, and put it into a computer database
> about 1985, still maintained. So I can see the
> total inventory now is just over 5000 volumes (and
> another 1000-odd papers in binders. Yes, I too
> have run out of shelf space, and two more parcels
> (9 vols.) arrived last week. . . )
>

Another option is a maid to vacuum the books every couple weeks.
In my house, smaller bookcases get replaced by taller
bookcases. Up and up they go. I am trying to create a
Paradox database for my authors and books.


Francis A. Miniter
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

Marko Amnell wrote:
> Partly due to my allergy to dust, and partly due to
> my desire to finally arrange my books in some
> kind of order, I've spent most of today cleaning my
> books and bookshelves of dust and arranging
> the books by general subject matter. I didn't
> arrange the books alphabetically by author,
> but even this rough classification led me to
> some fairly interesting observations about my
> own reading interests.
>
> There were six main subject matters, and
> the rest were just lumped into "miscellanous".
> I didn't count the books but I counted how
> many shelves there are in each subject.
> One shelf contains roughly 40 books.
> So, the six subjects are (I also calculated
> how many per cent of my total books
> each subject accounts for):
>
> History, 16 shelves, 25 per cent
> Fiction, 11 shelves, 18 per cent
> Philosophy, 10 shelves, 16 per cent
> Mathematics, 8 shelves, 13 per cent
> Economics, 5 shelves, 8 per cent
> Physics, 2 shelves, 3 per cent
>
> Misc. 11 shelves
> (includes political science, sociology,
> anthropology, psychology, biology,
> literary criticism, art history, travel, etc)
>
> I was surprised that History is now
> the largest group. That would not have
> been true 10 years ago. Also, I was
> a bit surprised that I have 400 books
> of philosophy; I would have guessed
> maybe half that. Otherwise, it was pretty
> much how I expected it to be.
>
> At 40 books per shelf the total number of
> books comes to about 2,520. This information
> may or may not be of interest to some who
> have read by posts in this ng during the last
> 16 years. Has anyone else counted or
> classified his or her books in a similar way?
>

I would have concluded from your posts that you had a
reasonable philosophy library. But 400 or so is a lot. I
have a little over half that and I thought I had a good
philosophy library. Now, I do not count in that 210 or so
religion or psychology or philosophical works in their
original languages (which are shelved in those language
sections - mostly Greek, Latin, French). Adding those in, I
suppose I would have a count of about 340 - 350.

As to how I organize my books, I have many different sections:

History
Biography
Latin and Greek
Philosophy
Religion
Psychology
Law
American Literature
English Literature
Irish Literature
Canadian Literature
Other English Language Literature
French Literature
Spanish Literature
German Literature
Russian Literature
World Literature other than the above
Mystery
Spy novels/Thrillers
Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Art
Photography
Math and Science (some of which should go with philosophy)
Dictionaries (various languages)
Reference

Within a category, books are organized chronologically by
birth of author. That enables me to find gaps in the
collection that need filling.


Francis A. Miniter
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

On 13 heinä, 19:08, "rms" <rsqui....TakeThisOut@REMOVEflashMOO.net> wrote:
> > Has anyone else counted or
> > classified his or her books in a similar way?
>
>     No.  Still slowly working through _Physics of Blown Sand and Desert
> Dunes_ btw, and highly recommend _Geology Illustrated_, by John S. Shelton,
> a wonderful introductory text!

There are just too many sciences to learn about
properly. I know far too little about subjects
such as geology and chemistry. I know a bit
more about biology, partly due to the influence
of a friend who has studied a great deal of
biology.
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

On 13 heinä, 18:51, "Don Phillipson" <e... RemoveThis @SPAMBLOCK.ncf.ca> wrote:
> "Marko Amnell" <marko_amn... RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:7c1c159a-bfc2-45a3-b501-a778c0fb564e@t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>
> >  . . .  History is now
> > the largest group. That would not have
> > been true 10 years ago. Also, I was
> > a bit surprised that I have 400 books
> > of philosophy; I would have guessed
> > maybe half that. Otherwise, it was pretty
> > much how I expected it to be.
>
> > At 40 books per shelf the total number of
> > books comes to about 2,520.
>
> Allergy and disposable money may decide
> whether your next project is glass-fronted
> bookshelves (to minimize dust accumulation)
> or a catalogue.   I kept a card catalogue since
> the age of about 10, maintained this index in and
> after college, and put it into a computer database
> about 1985, still maintained.   So I can see the
> total inventory now is just over 5000 volumes (and
> another 1000-odd papers in binders.  Yes, I too
> have run out of shelf space, and two more parcels
> (9 vols.) arrived last week. . . )

I'm mainly allergic to ragweed and take medication
during the summer for it. I have a slight allergy to
cats and to household dust. I'm concerned,
however, that these minor allergies might get
worse if I'm exposed to these substances for
long periods of time. Right now I have 9 bookcases
with 7 shelves each (so 63 shelves total). I'm out
of space at the moment, so this week I will
buy a tenth bookcase. I buy a lot of books through
amazon now, I have five books coming from
them this month. I'm looking forward to the travels
of Ibn Battuta in particular as I just recently started
reading the travels of Marco Polo for the first time
(I resisted reading it for years because I have
the same first name; somehow this made him
seem "too close".)
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

On 14 heinä, 08:13, Steve Hayes <hayesm....TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:11:20 -0700 (PDT), Marko Amnell
>
> <marko_amn....TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >At 40 books per shelf the total number of
> >books comes to about 2,520. This information
> >may or may not be of interest to some who
> >have read by posts in this ng during the last
> >16 years. Has anyone else counted or
> >classified his or her books in a similar way?
>
> My shelves are of unequal length, so it wouldn't work that way for me, and
> books are also of unequal thickness.

All my shelves are the same length as I have nine
identical bookcases, but the estimate of 40 books
per shelf is very rough. The actual number can be
anywhere from 30 to 50 depending on the thickness
of the books.

> But I've tried to enter books I've read into a computer database, and note
> whether they belong to me, a library, or someone else. And I enter new books
> into the database as well, but haven't entered all the old ones yet.

A database would be a good idea as the number of books
I own is now so large that the books are hard to find
without some classification system. That is one reason
I finally decided to bring order out of chaos yesterday.
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

On 13 heinä, 23:11, "Francis A. Miniter" <famini....DeleteThis@comcast.net>
wrote:
> Marko Amnell wrote:
> > Partly due to my allergy to dust, and partly due to
> > my desire to finally arrange my books in some
> > kind of order, I've spent most of today cleaning my
> > books and bookshelves of dust and arranging
> > the books by general subject matter. I didn't
> > arrange the books alphabetically by author,
> > but even this rough classification led me to
> > some fairly interesting observations about my
> > own reading interests.
>
> > There were six main subject matters, and
> > the rest were just lumped into "miscellanous".
> > I didn't count the books but I counted how
> > many shelves there are in each subject.
> > One shelf contains roughly 40 books.
> > So, the six subjects are (I also calculated
> > how many per cent of my total books
> > each subject accounts for):
>
> > History, 16 shelves, 25 per cent
> > Fiction, 11 shelves, 18 per cent
> > Philosophy, 10 shelves, 16 per cent
> > Mathematics, 8 shelves, 13 per cent
> > Economics, 5 shelves, 8 per cent
> > Physics, 2 shelves, 3 per cent
>
> > Misc. 11 shelves
> > (includes political science, sociology,
> > anthropology, psychology, biology,
> > literary criticism,  art history, travel, etc)
>
> > I was surprised that History is now
> > the largest group. That would not have
> > been true 10 years ago. Also, I was
> > a bit surprised that I have 400 books
> > of philosophy; I would have guessed
> > maybe half that. Otherwise, it was pretty
> > much how I expected it to be.
>
> > At 40 books per shelf the total number of
> > books comes to about 2,520. This information
> > may or may not be of interest to some who
> > have read by posts in this ng during the last
> > 16 years. Has anyone else counted or
> > classified his or her books in a similar way?
>
> I would have concluded from your posts that you had a
> reasonable philosophy library.  But 400 or so is a lot.  I
> have a little over half that and I thought I had a good
> philosophy library.  Now, I do not count in that 210 or so
> religion or psychology or philosophical works in their
> original languages (which are shelved in those language
> sections - mostly Greek, Latin, French).  Adding those in, I
> suppose I would have a count of about 340 - 350.
>
> As to how I organize my books, I have many different sections:
>
> History
> Biography
> Latin and Greek
> Philosophy
> Religion
> Psychology
> Law
> American Literature
> English Literature
> Irish Literature
> Canadian Literature
> Other English Language Literature
> French Literature
> Spanish Literature
> German Literature
> Russian Literature
> World Literature other than the above
> Mystery
> Spy novels/Thrillers
> Fantasy/Sci-Fi
> Art
> Photography
> Math and Science (some of which should go with philosophy)
> Dictionaries (various languages)
> Reference
>
> Within a category, books are organized chronologically by
> birth of author.  That enables me to find gaps in the
> collection that need filling.

Well, that's a highly organized system. I won't
try to achieve anything that systematic for the
time being. I will organize the books within my
six main subject matters in some way but it
won't be the same system for each subject.
What I will probably do is the following:

History will be organized by era, so that
I start with prehistory, then move on to
ancient history, the Middle Ages, and so on.

Fiction will be organized by the last name
of the author but many works of literary
criticism (especially on important authors
such as Shakespeare, Dickens, etc) will
be placed right next to the original works.

Philosopy will be organized by the last
name of the author. I actually own more
than 400 as I have lent most of my
postmodern philosophy books to my
father who is writing his second
doctoral dissertation on postmodernism
and the philosophy of religion. I
would estimate I lent him at least
50 books in this subject. The rest
of my philosophy books cover a
wide range from analytical philosophy
to Continental philosophy (with a
fairly large number of books in French).
For some authors, I have collected
all or nearly all of the published
works (such as Ernest Gellner,
Popper and Wittgenstein)

Mathematics will be organized by
subject matter, so that all the number
theory books are placed together, and
likewise for logic, set theory (those
are the three largest groups) and
with a separate section for the history
of mathematics.

Economics will be organized by the
last name of the author. And the physics
books don't need any organization system
as two shelves is not a lot and I rarely
buy more physics books. The "great
physicists" will get their own little
section, such as Newton, Einstein,
Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Feynman,
which will include their original works
on physics as well as their writings
on other subjects (and their bios).

I will extract at least politics from
my "miscellaneous" category
(because it's such a large group),
and probably art history and literary
criticism too. The rest is mostly
social science and psychology so
it can stay lumped together for
the time being.
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:11:20 -0700 (PDT), Marko Amnell
<marko_amnell DeleteThis @hotmail.com> wrote:

>At 40 books per shelf the total number of
>books comes to about 2,520. This information
>may or may not be of interest to some who
>have read by posts in this ng during the last
>16 years. Has anyone else counted or
>classified his or her books in a similar way?

My shelves are of unequal length, so it wouldn't work that way for me, and
books are also of unequal thickness.

But I've tried to enter books I've read into a computer database, and note
whether they belong to me, a library, or someone else. And I enter new books
into the database as well, but haven't entered all the old ones yet.


--
Steve Hayes
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/litmain.htm
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/hayesstw
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

Marko Amnell wrote:
> On 13 hein�, 23:11, "Francis A. Miniter" <famini....RemoveThis@comcast.net>
> wrote:
>> Marko Amnell wrote:
>>> Partly due to my allergy to dust, and partly due to
>>> my desire to finally arrange my books in some
>>> kind of order, I've spent most of today cleaning my
>>> books and bookshelves of dust and arranging
>>> the books by general subject matter. I didn't
>>> arrange the books alphabetically by author,
>>> but even this rough classification led me to
>>> some fairly interesting observations about my
>>> own reading interests.
>>> There were six main subject matters, and
>>> the rest were just lumped into "miscellanous".
>>> I didn't count the books but I counted how
>>> many shelves there are in each subject.
>>> One shelf contains roughly 40 books.
>>> So, the six subjects are (I also calculated
>>> how many per cent of my total books
>>> each subject accounts for):
>>> History, 16 shelves, 25 per cent
>>> Fiction, 11 shelves, 18 per cent
>>> Philosophy, 10 shelves, 16 per cent
>>> Mathematics, 8 shelves, 13 per cent
>>> Economics, 5 shelves, 8 per cent
>>> Physics, 2 shelves, 3 per cent
>>> Misc. 11 shelves
>>> (includes political science, sociology,
>>> anthropology, psychology, biology,
>>> literary criticism, �art history, travel, etc)
>>> I was surprised that History is now
>>> the largest group. That would not have
>>> been true 10 years ago. Also, I was
>>> a bit surprised that I have 400 books
>>> of philosophy; I would have guessed
>>> maybe half that. Otherwise, it was pretty
>>> much how I expected it to be.
>>> At 40 books per shelf the total number of
>>> books comes to about 2,520. This information
>>> may or may not be of interest to some who
>>> have read by posts in this ng during the last
>>> 16 years. Has anyone else counted or
>>> classified his or her books in a similar way?
>> I would have concluded from your posts that you had a
>> reasonable philosophy library. �But 400 or so is a lot. �I
>> have a little over half that and I thought I had a good
>> philosophy library. �Now, I do not count in that 210 or so
>> religion or psychology or philosophical works in their
>> original languages (which are shelved in those language
>> sections - mostly Greek, Latin, French). �Adding those in, I
>> suppose I would have a count of about 340 - 350.
>>
>> As to how I organize my books, I have many different sections:
>>
>> History
>> Biography
>> Latin and Greek
>> Philosophy
>> Religion
>> Psychology
>> Law
>> American Literature
>> English Literature
>> Irish Literature
>> Canadian Literature
>> Other English Language Literature
>> French Literature
>> Spanish Literature
>> German Literature
>> Russian Literature
>> World Literature other than the above
>> Mystery
>> Spy novels/Thrillers
>> Fantasy/Sci-Fi
>> Art
>> Photography
>> Math and Science (some of which should go with philosophy)
>> Dictionaries (various languages)
>> Reference
>>
>> Within a category, books are organized chronologically by
>> birth of author. �That enables me to find gaps in the
>> collection that need filling.
>
> Well, that's a highly organized system. I won't
> try to achieve anything that systematic for the
> time being. I will organize the books within my
> six main subject matters in some way but it
> won't be the same system for each subject.
> What I will probably do is the following:
>
> History will be organized by era, so that
> I start with prehistory, then move on to
> ancient history, the Middle Ages, and so on.

Ah. My statement about organization does not apply to
history. I shelve history the way you do. It highlights
the gaps without mercy. I find I have so little on Asia and
Africa.

>
> Fiction will be organized by the last name
> of the author but many works of literary
> criticism (especially on important authors
> such as Shakespeare, Dickens, etc) will
> be placed right next to the original works.
>
> Philosopy will be organized by the last
> name of the author. I actually own more
> than 400 as I have lent most of my
> postmodern philosophy books to my
> father who is writing his second
> doctoral dissertation on postmodernism
> and the philosophy of religion. I
> would estimate I lent him at least
> 50 books in this subject. The rest
> of my philosophy books cover a
> wide range from analytical philosophy
> to Continental philosophy (with a
> fairly large number of books in French).
> For some authors, I have collected
> all or nearly all of the published
> works (such as Ernest Gellner,
> Popper and Wittgenstein)
>
> Mathematics will be organized by
> subject matter, so that all the number
> theory books are placed together, and
> likewise for logic, set theory (those
> are the three largest groups) and
> with a separate section for the history
> of mathematics.
>
> Economics will be organized by the
> last name of the author. And the physics
> books don't need any organization system
> as two shelves is not a lot and I rarely
> buy more physics books. The "great
> physicists" will get their own little
> section, such as Newton, Einstein,
> Heisenberg, Schr�dinger, Feynman,
> which will include their original works
> on physics as well as their writings
> on other subjects (and their bios).
>
> I will extract at least politics from
> my "miscellaneous" category
> (because it's such a large group),
> and probably art history and literary
> criticism too. The rest is mostly
> social science and psychology so
> it can stay lumped together for
> the time being.
>


The toughest thing is to figure out where to place some
authors. For instance, yesterday, I was trying to shelve
Annie Besant, The Wisdom of the Upanishads. First I was
going to put her into English Literature where I have her
brother-in-law, Walter Besant. Then I wondered if this was
more properly religion, or even perhaps philosophy. In the
end, she went into religion.

And the best of science borders on philosophy. For
instance, Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, or The
Universe in a Nutshell, could go either with metaphysics or
particle physics. Fortunately, I have two copies of each!


Francis A. Miniter



Francis A. Miniter
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

On Jul 14, 6:55 pm, "Francis A. Miniter" <famini... DeleteThis @comcast.net>
wrote:

[...]

> > History will be organized by era, so that
> > I start with prehistory, then move on to
> > ancient history, the Middle Ages, and so on.
>
> Ah.  My statement about organization does not apply to
> history.  I shelve history the way you do.  It highlights
> the gaps without mercy.  I find I have so little on Asia and
> Africa.

I don't see how any personal history library
can be anything other than a collection of
gaps! Gaps, gaps, gaps, ... Comprehensive
coverage of world history as a whole in all
ages is impossible. What you get is a few
books on some of your favourite interests.
Given that inevitable fact, I have also collected
several different world histories, both big and
small, and reference works on world history
such as Bernard Grun's The Timetables of History,
various other encylopedias of dates and events
(even The Timechart History of the World,
a marvellous Victorian thing from 1890 that
is quaintly out of date in many places and
takes up half the floor when unfolded into
its full length). The problem is that world
history is so hard to do do properly today
that serious historian avoid it entirely. It is
us general readers who suffer. William
McNeill talks about this problem in some
of his essays.

"These are facts, historical facts, not schoolbook history,
not Mr. Well's history, but history nevertheless."

--- Kasper Gutman (the "Fat Man") in The Maltese Falcon
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

"Francis A. Miniter" <faminiter DeleteThis @comcast.net> wrote in message
news:Eo6dnbaDRY5Fw-fVnZ2dnUVZ_oDinZ2d@comcast.com...

> I am trying to create a Paradox database for my authors and books.

Hint: obsolete versions of Paradox may be as functional
as you need, cheaper and less trouble to learn. I used in
the 1980s Symantec Q&A, a non-relational database then
superior to Paradox for "flat file" functions, but switched
to Paradox when Q&A was abandoned (because my
quotations db requires unlimited memo files.) The version
I use is Paradox 7 which cost $50 or less (a tenth the price
of current Paradox) and has functions I did not yet need to explore.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

Since I collect works by certain writers and artists -- not manically
or systematically, but still lavishly -- pride of place on our book
cases (which is to say, the top shelves behind glass doors) -- goes to
Harlan Ellison, John Fowles, Jules Feiffer, and Ray Bradbury.

Just below is a shelf with an array of individual favorites -- the
books I would reach for to look at most often, and recommend to
visitors, such as:

-- The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
-- Not Wanted on the Voyage, Timothy Findley
-- Collected Poems and Plays, T.S. Eliot
-- The Films of Akira Kurosawa, Donald Ritchie (first clothbound and
third trade paper editions)
-- At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Peter Matthiessen
-- The World of Pooh, A.A. Milne
-- The Art of Eating, M.F.K. Fisher
-- The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (boxed sets of both the 1967 W.S.
Baring-Gould and 2005-6 Lesley Klinger editions)


Everything else is just rather haphazardly divided up into fiction and
nonfiction, and much of it stored away in boxes and closets.

I've gotten rid of a lot more books than I own today.


-- David Loftus
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust... 

On Jul 16, 7:06 am, "Francis A. Miniter" <famini....TakeThisOut@comcast.net>
wrote:

> Now if I can only acquire a first printing of At Play in the
> Fields of the Lord.


I THINK that's what mine is. Autographed, too.


-- David Loftus
 >> Stay informed about: a handful of dust...