Friday, July 22, 2005
(1:19 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Pickle Meme
Since today is officially Adam Robinson Promotion Day here at The Weblog, I am heeding the call and participating in a meme of his devising:1. How do you organize your collection? Loose alphabetical by author (some books "about" an author are grouped with the author, some are not -- no particular rationale), with no particular order within each author's works. At one point in history, I had it chronologically organized within each author, and some of them might still be that way, but I've made no conscious effort to maintain it -- aside from my Derrida books, which I arranged chronologically by their date of original French publication after having used them for my thesis and not being sure exactly what else to do with myself right after finishing my thesis (see #3, below). Most reference books, including foreign-language dictionaries and grammars (I mysteriously do not own an English-English dictionary), lit anthologies, and the complete Shakespeare and Milton, are located at the tail end of my collection, after the substantial "Z" section. (See #2 for more detail.)
2. What books or records do you keep separate from your collection for easy access? Whatever books I'm reading, I usually keep on the bookshelf still, but I put them horizontally, often on top of the other books, as part of my ongoing uphill campaign to keep the dining room table empty at all times. I keep a couple different Bible translations, a commentary, and a volume of the Apostolic Fathers on top of my bigger bookshelf, by the door, not because I refer to them constantly, but because I needed my Bible for a class last semester and haven't found another place for it. Putting it in my room seems to me to send a message I don't want to send. I keep a book with French vocabulary arranged thematically and Critique of Cynical Reason in my room; I haven't touched either in months, aside from when I "rearranged" my room by putting the alarm clock on my bedside table and the books on the dresser (previously, they had been reversed; my room is too small for me to have any other viable furniture-moving options).
3. When you take down a book for reference, how long after you finish with it does it take you to reshelve it? Usually, when I take down a book for this reason, it's part of my paper-writing ritual. I tend to take down every book that I think I'll need for a paper and stack them next to the computer -- then, obsessive-compulsive as I am, I put them all into my Works Cited page in MLA format, putting them all in boldface and returning them to non-bold once they are cited (see, then I know which books to remove because they haven't been cited, get it, get it? I have a problem). When I'm done with the paper, putting away the books is part of the ritual of telling myself I am "done." I suppose that having my things be out of order is my way of punishing myself for not yet being finished with a piece of writing. There are any number of reasons this whole regime is ridiculous.
4. What resource do you keep separate from your collection because you don't want anyone to know you have it? I don't really have anything to hide on this front, but I do have many of my books separated out into a crate-like thing beside my computer. I had planned on selling them on Amazon, but many of them are novels, which don't tend to sell well -- then Amazon cancelled all my listings after a stupidly short time anyway, and it's too much work to go back and manually relist them all, so now they're just in the crate for no particular reason.
I challenge all my co-bloggers, Bitch PhD, John Holbo, Scott Eric Kaufman, Matt Christie, and all our pals over at Long Sunday.
I request that if my co-bloggers respond to this, we limit ourselves to only two further posts for this same meme, to be awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis. The rest of you can leave the meme in the comment box of your choice. I won't delete your post if you violate this policy, but I will hate you forever. Thanks!
