What are you reading in 2025?

[prabe]

Entire shelves of books have been written about organization schema for books and libraries. Not surprisingly there are classes on it in librarian school.

The bookshelves in my house are very loosely grouped--there are some categories we have multiple books in--and in many of the groups, the "organization" is ... distinctly archaeological. Neither my wife nor I is a librarian.

 

[Cadence]

Entire shelves of books have been written about organization schema for books and libraries. Not surprisingly there are classes on it in librarian school.

Our uni's (much depleted?) library science program is in the building I look at out my office window.

Being an academic, it is part of my profession's code to ignore that one can earn a PhD in pedagogy, curriculum design, technical writing, assessment, program evaluation, programing, ...
(If I wasn't in a quantitative field I likely would have added data analysis and statistics to the list and maybe taken one of the others off).

In any event, I feel comfortable in authoritatively pontificating about how the six books in the Chronicles of Narnia should be put in order and why those arguing six isn't right should read how Nero Wolfe treated Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary when it came out in 1961.

 

[overgeeked]

The bookshelves in my house are very loosely grouped--there are some categories we have multiple books in--and in many of the groups, the "organization" is ... distinctly archaeological. Neither my wife nor I is a librarian.

Despite owning and having read several books on organization schema and having taken the quite fancy sounding "Theory of Organization of Information" class for my MLS, my books are roughly sorted by a dozen different schema at least two of which are variations on "whatever shelf had room at the time".

 

[jian]

I think you are onto something if we feel like getting towards "what is great". Part of it is talent; but I think a larger part of it is how well known an author is in the cultural zeitgeist. For the late 20th century, there aren't many writers whose works are better known than King. Partially because of how many were made into movies. Maybe Michael Crichton...

And how much matters about how they are viewed afterwards? Do you have to wait until they’re dead to say they’re the best writer of the 20th century as far as the 21st century is concerned (so far)? It’s pretty complicated and depends on a lot of factors.

For instance, one writer who’s often cited as one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th century and the writer of a major contender for the greatest American novel is F Scott Fitzgerald for The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald was mostly known as a gossip writer and occasional daring young novelist in his life, but was generally a critical and financial failure; when he died in 1940 he reasonably considered his work to be obscure and forgotten.

However, The Great Gatsby was widely distributed to American servicemen in WW2 (due to a small cabal of publishers who really liked it and were asked to pick some books) and became extremely popular. It was then taught in schools for decades and adapted for film and TV several times, most recently in 2013 with Leonardo di Caprio. Fitzgerald is presumably livid he never got to see all the appreciation, wherever he is now.

We have no idea whether anyone will think Gatsby is a great book in 50 or 100 years - maybe his popularity is temporary. Even Shakespeare dropped into obscurity for a century or so.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Even Shakespeare dropped into obscurity for a century or so.

Obscurity for a century is kind of a strong claim. My understanding is that he was less popular during the 17th century than he became later. The governments of the Interregnum had shut down the theaters, and other playwrights were preferred in performance, but he still seems to have been part of the standard repertory. That said, the 16th and 17th centuries are not my periods, so I'd definitely be interested in reading more about this if you have recommendations.

 

[jian]

Obscurity for a century is kind of a strong claim. My understanding is that he was less popular during the 17th century than he became later. The governments of the Interregnum had shut down the theaters, and other playwrights were preferred in performance, but he still seems to have been part of the standard repertory. That said, the 16th and 17th centuries are not my periods, so I'd definitely be interested in reading more about this if you have recommendations.

Yes, I think that’s true - relative obscurity would be a better phrase. Everyone had still heard of him, though, and all his invented words and phrases were busy being used by everyone as they are now.

(I don’t know about you, but I exit pursued by a bear frequently. Comes of living in Canada, I suppose.)

 

[Old Fezziwig]

(I don’t know about you, but I exit pursued by a bear frequently. Comes of living in Canada, I suppose.)

I love how that stage direction somehow has come down to us over 400 years later entirely intact.

 

[overgeeked]

(I don’t know about you, but I exit pursued by a bear frequently. Comes of living in Canada, I suppose.)

If you have a certain look and live in certain cities you will often be pursued by bears.

 

[jian]

If you have a certain look and live in certain cities you will often be pursued by bears.

Why thank you, kind sir or madam or zir.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I certainly love the turn this conversation has gone!

My frustration with how bookstores organize their shelves stems from the fact that i enter the store with a list. And that list is most easily sorted alphabetically by author or title or both. Genre sorting is great (maybe) for this "browsing" thing people talk about; but genre sorting is also so arbitrary that I KNOW I have been in a bookstore that had a book on my list; but since they put it into historical fiction or literary fiction or whatever means I never saw the darn thing. Like now I know to look in literary fiction for Jonathan Carroll books. But in my ideal world, I would find the Jonathan Carroll books close to the PC Cast romance-urban-fantasy novels, and not so far away from Ramsey Campbell, John Dickson Carr, and Jack Chalker. That's the other thing. I like a lot of different genres of fiction. For me, I'm game to "browse" it all, cause I like it all, at least in theory.

Final point today on this - really, the internet is made for my kind of shopping. I've got a list, just look it up on Amazon or Abe or Thrift or whatever. Spend my shekels or dinar, go on my way. But some of the books on my list I wouldn't pay more than $1 used for - most books published before 1980 for example, so that when it inevitably disappoints me for it's -isms, it won't hurt to recycle. And really, the purpose of my list is to have some boundaries around my book buying. And by boundaries, I mean my list is ~500 books long. And my to-read shelf of dead tree books is also roughly 300 books (and graphic novels and RPG books). It's all about the hunt, at the end of the day. And AMZ, ABE, etc don't provide any excitement in the hunt. And I also like to support local business, wherever I may be.

Would you put graphic novels go with the rest of fiction or in their own section?

It's so hilarious to me that "graphic novels" in Dewey decimal system in many public libraries are slotted into non-fiction over in the 741.59 area (great comic discussing the issue of graphic novels in Dewey. Note it's a pdf, so takes a bit of time to load, and may be terrible read on a phone).

For my imaginary bookstore that is good only for me (as I said upthread there) I would put graphic novels in their own section (same with RPGS, in a different section); but within the graphic novels section I'd alphabetize strictly by title. Again, Genre be damned as a fool's game. Conveniently, most superhero books start with the name of the superhero/supergroup in the title: "X Men Age of Apocalypse" "Batman Killing Joke". Maaaaybe the only exception I might make is for two things: Manga/Manhwa might be separate; and adult (as in p0@rn, not as it the same word meant in prose book publishing field) in it's own section. Which is good, as I have no adult graphic novels on my list so will make my searching much easier.

You're 100% right, you didn't ask about how I would organize my RPGs, but I'll tell you anyway . Strictly by brand in alphabetical order. In other words Dungeons & Dragons would be on the shelf near Dungeon World. World of Darkness near to World of Dungeons. Within system, Core books first, then all other books by title. "What about third party publishers?""What about system agnostic adventures?" "what about this, or that, or even the other thing?" I will answer future questions once someone gives me ~$200,000 to start my own bookstore, and it actually becomes relevant