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Proper form or not, sometimes moving "A" or "The" to the back of the title for alpabetization purposes seems wrong to me. "A Fish Called Wanda" is the intended title, why file it under "Fish Called Wanda, A"?
How do you organize your movies, tapes, whatevers? Should "A Series of Unfortunate Events" go under A or S? "The Princess Bride," T or P?
[ August 07, 2005, 12:16 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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Fish Called Wanda, A Series of Unfortunate Events, A Princess Bride, The
The logic, I think, is that if you filled them with A or The at the begining then there would just be too many in that section. I think you only do this for A and The (Indefinite and Definite articles).
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It works great, except when friends want to borrow something -- then they need me to find it for them.
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What about "Of Mice and Men"? Should it be "Mice and Men, Of"?
I find I'm more likely to leave "A" where it is, but I usually move "The" to the back. Personal preference, although it still seems odd to me. And in my music folders on my computer, "The Beatles" are indeed under T.
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quote:Well, Chris, just read books, and alphabetize by author. It will save you much time.
But after you've arranged by author, how do you arrange the author's books?
Actually that's moot for me, I usually either stack them in however they fit, or file them by series (especially in the case of our host), or put them in chronological order of publication.
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Shouldn't the thread title read "How do you alphabetize titles?"
Anyhow, I do it by the first significant word in the title. This means ignoring any prepositions or articles that come first.
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I tend to sort primarily by genre and subgenre. For DVDs all the horror movies on one shelf, with all the zombie movies grouped together.
The comic books (trade paperbacks, not the individual books) are arranged by author and then series, with series connections between two authors usually determining the order. For instance, the Alan Moore section ends with The Killing Joke, which is followed by miscellanious Batman trades by authors I only have Batman stuff of, ending with Frank Miller's Batman trades, which begins the Frank Miller section.
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I alphabetize authors, and then I do the author's books however I want to. For OSC, first I have the "How to write SF and Fantasy" and then the Ender series, Shadow series, and so on.
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But alphabetising is not my strong point I have a stack on DVDs. No particular order other than the most recently watched are at the top.
Book shelf is done by: Fantasy Sci Fi Kids Books Books my mother would approve of Business books Reference books Books that I intend to read Books that I don't intend to read ... ever .. not even if you paid me.
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I don't alphabetize at all. The books on my shelf have only vague organization. Tolkien has his own shelf- all of his books are on there. The Lord of the Rings is in order, left to right. All others are wherever the size of the book makes them most aesthetically pleasing on the shelf.
All my mass market paperbacks are together. Trade paperbacks and hardcovers are by loose subject grouping, books on theology here, SF/Fantasy here, etc. How they're arranged within that group depends on how they look - I go for aesthetics.
If you're wondering how I find a particular book I want to read, that's the point. I like to stand in front of my shelves and browse with my eyes until I find what I want, many times I'll see something else and go "Oh! I'd rather read that." Alphabetizing would totally take the fun out of it. Plus it would look odd, all those different sizes of books crammed together.
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"Plus it would look odd, all those different sizes of books crammed together."
That is the one thing that bothers me about my order. But I don't know how else to organize it without it having a set order. I have some serious OCD when it comes to my book shelf.
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Do you stack your books horizontally or vertically? I have mine vertically, it looks nicer, but is it bad for the spine, like I heard?
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I would alphabatize by the word I actually say first. Like for The Princess Bride, I never say "The". I always say "Princess Bride" so I would file it under P. A Fish Called Wanda on the other hand, I would file under A since I say the "A". Get it? I know this is not correct, and I know the rules for correct alphabetizing but this is my own personal collection so it is all about me being able to find my stuff. Then again, I don't alphabatize anything since I am a slob. Just hypothetically...
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: I don't alphabetize at all. The books on my shelf have only vague organization. Tolkien has his own shelf- all of his books are on there. The Lord of the Rings is in order, left to right. All others are wherever the size of the book makes them most aesthetically pleasing on the shelf.
All my mass market paperbacks are together. Trade paperbacks and hardcovers are by loose subject grouping, books on theology here, SF/Fantasy here, etc. How they're arranged within that group depends on how they look - I go for aesthetics.
If you're wondering how I find a particular book I want to read, that's the point. I like to stand in front of my shelves and browse with my eyes until I find what I want, many times I'll see something else and go "Oh! I'd rather read that." Alphabetizing would totally take the fun out of it. Plus it would look odd, all those different sizes of books crammed together.
This is very much like my system. I do have books grouped by author (or type, in the case of my ST books, which take up two shelves stacked double-deep both ways). Within an author's area it's by series and/or hardcover v. softcover. SF&F books are roughly grouped together, mysteries are roughly grouped together. And romance novels get several shelves in another room.
Of course, at the moment none of this is true, since they're (almost) all in storage. As are my bookcases. But it should be true again in a month or so. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: But after you've arranged by author, how do you arrange the author's books?
Generally (there are exceptions in my library) I would shelve by category (SF/F, non-fiction, mystereies etc. - whatever categories make sense to you), then author, and then series (if any), and then order of publication.
Exceptions might be made if the series was published out of order in relation to the timeline of the story. Two good examples of this are Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels, and OSC's Enderverse. By order of publication you would shelve the Enderverse: EG, the Speaker books, then the Shadow books with First Meetings sandwiched in somewhere. By story timeline, you would have First Meetings, then EG, then the Shadow books, etc.
I'm not sure of the order of the Foundation novels by either method, but in any case, alphabetizing by title makes little sense to me.
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I have an easy system. Most of my books are stacked on a shelf in random piles. All the rest which I've started or looked at in the last few months are scattered on the floor or on my desk or in my bag or in the kitchen or the living room or...
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A, An, and The get ignored in my system, both at work and at home. Initials are filed as if it was a continuous word (for example: Lewis, L.L. Bean, Lombard, LTD) regardless of the presence of punctuation marks.
I sort my books by author, and then I keep series together by event chronology. After the series are the rest of that author's books alphabetically. So for OSC, I have Ender, then Alvin Maker, then Homecoming (simply because that's the order I bought them in), and then after that is Homebody (which at the moment is the only non-series book of his I own).
King (the only author whose library is fully complete and is on his own cabinet because they're all hardbounds) is sorted by publish date, and then after Dark Tower 7 are all the "about King's work" books - Spignesi, Grant, etc - and the few anthologies I've picked up. I do have a very few duplicates of his - The Talisman because one copy is signed and then Dreamcatcher and Christine in UK editions that were gifts. (my copies of Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah are also UK editions because I didn't like the US covers. I'm not sure at the moment if Dark Tower is US or UK)
What drives me nuts at work is when a client forms a company (usually medical corporations) using their name. Then we have a file under John Smith, MD, SC for his corporate work and a second file under Smith, John for his estate planning stuff.
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One bookshelf has the comics and graphic novels I want to keep handy (as opposed to the one sin boxes), as well as non-fiction. The shelf next to that is nonfiction, some of Teresa's books, and our yearbooks and such. The big honker shelf that fills one wall of our bedroom is all fiction. I don't distinguish between genres, it's all there by author (an awful lot of the stuff I like isn't easily classified into a genre anyway). Paperbacks are stacked vertically unless I have a lot from a single author and a flat stack would take up less room for the same books. There are also piles of unfiled or unread books on nearly every shelf. The shelf in the hallway by the upstairs bathroom has comic collections (Calvin & Hobbes, Doonesbury, etc) and collections from comics (Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Dave Barry) as they make good light reading. Around my desk are piles of reference and more nonfiction books. And around my desk at work are more reference, and copies of some of my favorite books in case I finish the one I brought with me.
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I have my fiction books (hardback & paperback) on one large bookshelf. They're filed by author, then by title--ignoring A, An, or The. Favorite author books and series are filed on a separate shelf (including OSC, obviously) the same way.
Nonfictions books are just piled on a bookshelf by height so that they all fit. A few smaller books that I use often are on my CD cabinet shelves by the computer.
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