Skip to main content

On the Arrangement of Books and the Impossibilities of To-do Lists

Hello Lovelies!

I made a trip to my local public library today. It was lovely. But it got me thinking about the various ways to arrange books.

At my house, I have my books arranged by read/ to-read then by color. It works for me because I'm a fairly visual person so I remember what covers I have for books. And I have them separated by read / to-read so that I can see the ones I need to-read. It's an impetus to get me to read the books I own.

My roommate, on the other hand, prefers to keep her books separated by subject. She would love to have them alphabetically after that, but with our shelving situation at the moment, she hasn't been able to do that.

At work, we keep our books separated into genres than alphabetically by author's last name.

At the library, the books are simply alphabetical by author's last name.

So why did I want to write about this? Because I was thinking when I was at the library about all the books people miss out on simply because they believe they like a certain kind of genre. I'm not going to say that they don't. But I can't even say how many books I've picked up because I noticed the cover or spine art at the library that I didn't know a thing about and ended up loving. I tend to prefer Fantasy novels, but if I only ever looked in a fantasy section, that's all I'd ever read. Of course it'd be the only thing I liked. But if I open myself up to other genres, I find favorite books based on the stories and the writing instead of the "genre".

The impossibilities of to-do lists frustrates me. I hate to-do lists at the same time that I love them. Without them, my life would be a mess. I get obsessive with planners when I'm in classes. But I also hate the necessity of them. I wish I could read what I want to read when I want to read it. But like right now, I need to read Orange is the New Black for my book club on Wednesday night, and I also need to read Mansfield Park for a scholarship essay that's due on the 15th. And I want to read The Elite since The One comes out on Tuesday. And on and on and on. There's always more books to read, and to-do lists make me focus on one above the other and I don't particularly like that.

Anyway. I hope your lives are going swell, lovelies. Let me know how you arrange your books in the comments!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

More Diversity in Your Book Diet

Hello Lovelies! As usual Top Ten Tuesday is brought to you by the lovely people over at The Broke and the Bookish . Today's topic is Top Ten Books for People Who Like X, and I'm going to go with... Top Ten Books for People Who Like Diversity Thanks to the efforts of groups like We Need Diverse Books, diversity is having a resurgence in young adult and children's books. For the last couple years, I have been trying to read more books with diverse characters or by diverse authors. (Diverse in this respect includes race, sexuality, gender, and disability). I haven't endeavored to challenge myself to only read a certain type of book i.e. only those by women of color or anything that isn't by a white heterosexual male, but I try to be extra aware of the characters and ask myself if they actually are white (sometimes the text doesn't say it, sometimes people just assume it!) and if being white is necessary for the character or not.  But here are my top t...
Hello Lovelies!! It's a very special Top Ten Tuesday because it's also my 100th post!! Woohoo!! Honestly this is probably the longest I've stuck with a hobby so I'm pretty excited about this milestone. So The Broke and the Bookish 's topic this week is.. I went with books that I own but haven't read yet which I would like to take to a beach (if I could get to one, hahaha, Montana is a landlocked state).  Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen Girl at Sea by Maureen Johnson Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys by Kate Brian If I Stay by Gayle Forman Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani Read My Lips by Teri Brown Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti So that's my list! It's heavy on contemporary fiction novels because summer brin...

TBT: The Witch of Blackbird Pond

In middle school, I was a member of this reading club where we had a set of books to read as a team, and then we did like little quizzes on them against other teams. (SUPER NERD!). And now, I'm not entirely certain, but I feel pretty sure that club was where I read this book for the first time. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare is a Newbery award winning historical fiction novel. Orphan Kit Tyler has been moved from her home in the Caribbean to her puritan relative's home in Connecticut.  She feels like she has nothing in common with these relatives, but she does form an attachment with an old Quaker woman and a young sailor, Nat. Of course breaking out of the mold is not without its price, and Kit learns this for herself when she is accused of witchcraft. This is one of those books that I think about constantly. I haven't reread it in several years, but I always want to. I recommend it frequently to other. This is a book for readers...