There's a conversation on Making Light (that started off*) about a NYT obit for J. G. Ballard that includes a quote saying “His fabulistic style led people to review his work as science fiction,” said Robert Weil, Mr. Ballard’s American editor at Norton. “But that’s like calling Brave New World science fiction, or 1984.” My reaction to that quote is rather rude, but that's not the point of this post.
There's discussion going in the comments at ML about about shelving books. Some have light-heartedly recommended shelving by color; others share how they shelve their books. Got me thinking about a new random thing to share.
In the past, when we had room for inside bookshelves**, I've shelved alphabetically regardless of genre, also mixing hard back and paperback books on the same shelf. The only exception is my rather large collection of Star Trek novelizations.
While those books are written by many different authors, they are all about Star Trek, so I feel they should all be shelved together (and so do the bookstores I buy them in). They all go in publication order, by show order. So the TOS books, then the TNGs, the DS9 and the VOY (very few). Never bought any Enterprise.
Then there are the ones that don't fit by series (SCE, Excalibur, Titan, etc.) those are by publication order, but each spin off story is in its own group. There are a few other series of stories (Captain's Table series, for example) that also don't fit into the main categories, those too are grouped separately.
And that's #8. At this rate it'll take me years to get to 50.
*many start on one topic and delightfully wander off into fascinating diversions
** right now the shelves and 80% of my books are in the garage
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2 comments:
I read Ballard's The Drowned World in the (late*) 60s.
He, and Philip Dick and Andre Norton and Roger Zelazny and a few others ingrained, and then fed, an appetite for SF that remained hearty for decades. I'm sorry to hear of his passing.
And I'm beside myself with envy at imagining a bookshelf wherein its contents are shelved alphabetically, or at least with some degree of order.
:)
*(I'm not THAT old!)
I read Dick, Norton and Zelazny as well (maybe a year or two later than you did) but missed Ballard. Not sure how that happened, but am sorry I did. Going to have to rectify that soon.
I envy past me who had orderly shelves. Current me has not been as organized with the books in the house.
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