Books. And communism. And communist books. SQUEE!

[sabotabby]

Attention political friends: If you are not reading brownfist's LJ lately, you are really missing out. He's just returned from India, and he's been posting a ton about the Maoist insurgency in Nepal and the movement in India. Fascinating stuff.

The eye-watering colours and layout that works on my computer but probably not on yours are actually my fault, but they'll be fixed soon.

In particular, check out this post, which addresses a problem that both brownfist and I have been facing lately, and one that I'm sure affects many of you, namely: How does one organize one's library?

It is impossible to create stable categories based on an essential truth, rather all delineation is arbitrary. There are consistent slippages from within these categories, and the categories are inherently unstable. Should the library thus reflect this? Should the library itself always be re-ordering itself according to the unstability of its own categories? However, within this post-structuralist rambling we return to the arbitrary ordering of my library. Should Com. Shibdas Ghosh sit besides Paul Gilroy, a man that Shibdas Ghosh would call a revisionist and anti-revolutionary. Should my library reflect the sectarian nature of the current Left, whether it be local, national or international? Or should it privilege certain features over others?

This is serious business. My problems are more prosaic: Does my second-edition copy of Emma Goldman's Living My Life go under Biographies and Autobiographies or Anarchism? Does Wobblies! go under Graphic Novels or IWW/Labour History?

This has been a shameless ploy to get more people on brownfist's friends list. And to mention my library.

Comments

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Cataloguing. Serious business!

I do this for a living and let me tell you, subject analysis is not an organizing principle. Unless you are prepared to buy multiple copies of books and shelve them under each relevant category.

[sabotabby]

It gets additionally complicated when one is considering the physical attributes of books themselves. For pragmatic reasons (i.e., the cats), good hardcovers, art books, and rare or expensive books cannot go on low shelves lest they become someone's scratching post.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

I have a rat cage in the middle of my bookshelf. This way I can always tell if someone has one of my loaner books at their house -- just follow the smell of rodent urine!

Oddly, people never borrow books from me anymore.

[brownfist.livejournal.com]

Well that is your folly for owning a cat! However, perhaps may I suggest glass casing for the books... so that the cat cannot get to them, and one can enjoy at the cats expense some entertainment (i.e. the cat trying to scratch books but hitting glass). Yeah, I agree that subject analysis is not an organizing principle. However, if that isnt, then what is? How does one avoid the unwieldy catalogue systems employed by larger libraries such as LoC?

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

(Sorry if my answer is tediously obvious -- I can't tell if you're being rhetorical, and I wanted to take the time to answer because I am procrastinating my tedious subject analysis of reference requests :))

The organizing principle is a searchable catalogue, in which books are identified by a call number (Dewey or LoC are most common); the call number is a finding aid for locating a book on a shelf -- the subject analysis is an access point to get the call number of the books on that subject.

It so happens that call numbers group like subjects, but this is only true to a degree. For example, in my library I routinely assign six subject headings, but the book is not present in six locations, so five shelves where a book might potentially be grouped go without.

The assignment of a unique call number is what makes large libraries possible. I could potentially scatter my collection completely at random throughout a range of numbers, and still find everything I need provided the books are arranged in a predictable sequence.

Of course, assigning numbers and sticking on labels is tedious for most people and impractical for a home library. Most people organize their books (if at all) by assigning each just one general "subject heading"(/genre/level/what-not) in their memory, and then alphabetizing each physical subject heading area by author or title. I.e.: memory = catalogue, "general subject" = access point, alphabet = finding aid. But as the collection grows, very quickly you run into conceptual problems, and this is where you and sabotabby are.

Home libraries suffer the pangs of disorder when they grow large enough that memory no longer serves as a reliable catalogue replacement, and the multi-faceted nature of the collection is no longer easily represented by singular "general subject headings". More and more books cross over the artificial boundaries, pulling toward multiple centres of attraction. So, what to do?

I don't know if this would work for you, but my answer is -- abandon precision. Instead of generating more contingent "general subject headings", trying to separate, say, the structuralist anthropologists from the functionalists, is futile; trying to separate the anthropologists from the sociologists is likely also futile; reduce them to the bare essentials, i.e. "social sciences" or even "humanities", and alphabetize ruthlessly, even if it does mean Ghosh sits next to Gilroy, next to Goldman, next to Gramsci. You end up with big, imprecise, but reliable lumps. You can even share your library with other people! :)

My own home library's big lumps are "fiction", "researchy non-fiction", "non-English books", "cookbooks and dictionaries", "books I haven't read yet", "books I want to get rid of", "borrowed books", "books to large to fit where they belong" and "books I don't want people to see". Yes, the solution I propose does resemble The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge!

[sabotabby]

Glass is Mr. Marinetti's favourite thing. Maybe I should try sandpaper...

You know you secretly love my cat and probably want one of your own.

[jaymoh.livejournal.com]

Oh dear!

Our "library" is organized by the "will it fit?" principal. All of the bookshelves have books sloppily stacked horizontally atop the vertically standing books. We have books in our kitchen cupboards and above them!

Your ploy worked. I've read a few posts on brownfist's lj. Great stuff.

[sabotabby]

That used to be how mine were organized, but now I have much more room.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

papersky simply organizes by author's surname. Fiction/non-fiction, doesn't matter. She says that she likes to imagine the authors or characters having conversations.

Me, I have one book case of fiction, and the rest are completely idiosyncratic subject-matter categories. I know where to find things.

[sabotabby]

Oh, great. Thanks to you and papersky, I'm now picturing Marcos, Mayakovsky, and Marinetti (the author, not the cat) all having a conversation and desperately trying to have it not descend into real-person slash.

[uberbitsch.livejournal.com]

Well. That's me sold. I don't know nearly enough about the Maoist uprising in Nepal even though I probably should. Although there's plenty of things I know about but don't know enough about. Damn my incessant curiosity.

[sabotabby]

Tell me about it. We're forming a reading group, if you can immigrate fast enough. ;)

[uberbitsch.livejournal.com]

Well, if you want to list any recommendations off your reading list then I'll be able to keep until the emigration is complete. ;)

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

I split my library in fiction/non-fiction, and then by size. Or, I also have comic books apart because they're too tall for regular shelves. (European comic books... Hardcovers, full-size, not the lame American stuff.)

[sabotabby]

I split my library in fiction/non-fiction

Haha, where do you keep A Million Little Pieces?

I don't understand why North Americans insist on putting valuable comic book in paperback form. It's a really bad idea.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

A Million

You don't. :P

North Americans think comic books are for children. Europeans know better. Remind me to show you Jodorowski's Metabarons series if you drop by here one day.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, and my own broad categories are

Books about the Stuff of Story and Poetry (fairy tales, myths, legends, biographies of authors, language, poetry ...)

History, society, and politics. I'm thinking of putting science in here, too, but not linguistics

Art, archaeology, and pretty books

Music

Dead languages and texts in or translated from dead languages

Reference books that I typically use while working (in the office), and reference books that I should use while working

Books having to do with needlework

[sabotabby]

Don't forget cookbooks! Although I suppose those aren't in the library.

[groovitude.livejournal.com]

Ooohh. Vintage booooooks.

[sabotabby]

Not like I have many.

[groovitude.livejournal.com]

Hahaha. Modesty, your name is sabotabby!

[ocicat-bengals.livejournal.com]

Does my second-edition copy of Emma Goldman's Living My Life go under Biographies and Autobiographies or Anarchism?

Mines with the Anarchism books. As for biographies, on sick whim I bought Kitty Kelly's biography of the Bush family, and my cat has completely ripped the cover to shreads. Isn't that clever? Biography is on bottom shelf, but she left every other loose jacket alone.

[sabotabby]

Smart kitty! Someone (or both of them) has ripped a huge hole in Catnip!Bush's head, making him resemble JFK more than anything else.

[brownfist.livejournal.com]

I think the question regarding an ethics of organizing a library still remains. I understand that practically Ghosh belongs between Gilroy and Gandhi, however, does the library not reflect a political gesture? Is not the catalogue itself a political statement? As for memory being my catalogue, I cant rely on that. My library is in a constant state of expansion, and once my recent purchases in India arrive I will be swamped with new books. But thats it: I have bought so many different kinds of books which reflect the myriad of different interests that occupy me. There is no real consistent theme in the books.

I really like papersky's imagining that her books and their authors being in dialogue with one another. Perhaps, that is the reason why Ghosh, Gandhi and Gilroy should belong together. For the very reason that they can be in political dialogue with one another, and irregardless of their own political stances and denunciations of one another, there can be a possibility for some political hybridity (something that is really lacking today).

Oh by the way just to announce a possibility of an event occuring. I have spoken to two-three people I know who are involved/interested in Maoism in the Third World, and we are in the preliminary stages of organizing an event in Toronto. There will be one speaker who will speak on the Maoist movement in Iran. Another, who will speak on Afghanistan. I will speak most likely on India and maybe Nepal.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

My organized chunks include the following:

• One of the religion shelves (the rest of religion is hiding over with the Greek plays, but I don't know why), which is ordered approximately geographically - Japan on the right, going over to flaky new age stuff (i.e., California) on the left. If I get anything from Hawaii, it has to go with the Greeks - no more room otherwise.
  
• Language dictionaries and learning materials go from Afrikaans to Zulu.
  
• Poetry is all together. Ogden Nash (a signed volume) is probably next to a book of Russian verse. Beowulf is probably on that shelf.
  
• Feminist Studies/Queer Studies/Anthropology seem to be co-located.
  
• Computer science and Math textbooks are co-located with general science. Computer references are scattered over by the Greek plays.
  
• Somehow, the Greek playwrights have become a reference point. Around Aeschylus and Aristophanes are philosophy of religion, Homer, Aristotle, Plato, the Divine Comedy, and computer references.
  
• Fiction is scattered over a couple bookshelves and other surfaces, without any discernible order.
  
• Oops - I almost forgot - there are two (unopened) boxes of paperback science fiction in my bedroom. I need more shelf space.
  

I suspect by the time I get everything organized, I'll have to move again.

[sabotabby]

I've got:

ª Fiction, spread over two shelves
• Children's fiction
• Language and reference (soon to go in the office)
• Graphic novels and pretty 'zines
• Art and design books
• Plays
• Poetry
• Biographies/autobiographies
• Politics in general
• Palestine/Israel (big enough to merit its own section)
• Latin America and the Caribbean (same here)
• Anarchism
• Maoism (now large enough to get its own section. Thank you, brownfist.)
• Labour/IWW (and also an IWW filing cabinet)

I obviously have some overlap issues.

[sabotabby]

Oh, and general non-fiction, which are car guides and such that don't fit anywhere else, and cookbooks, which go in the kitchen.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

Does Wobblies! go under Graphic Novels or IWW/Labour History?

You have only one copy?

To pick up the gay cowboy thread once again, click here and then on "Domestic Pardners."

[sabotabby]

I suppose I should buy more to support the artists. ;)

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

I ain't getting any royalties, but I always like to have spare loaner copies on hand. Those copies of Jason Lutes's Berlin and Joe Sacco's Palestine? Spares.

[brownfist.livejournal.com]

As for possibilities for the reading circle:
The Great Debate - Documents from the Sino-Soviet split
Mao - ??
Lin Piao - Long Live the Victory of People's War
Charu Mazumdar - 8 Historical Documents
T. Nagi Reddy - India Mortgaged
Some Important Documents of Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
Problems and Prospects of Revolution in Nepal
Monarchy Vs. Democracy - Baburam Bhattarai

I am trying to find shit out of the Philippines, but that is proving difficult. Also, a prof./friend of mine from Iran was involved with the Maoists in the 1970's so possibly some stuff from Iran. But its all still in process of being figured out.