Stack 'em

Just before I left NY, I managed to get all of the literature off the floor and into the stacks.  Just twenty-one boxes of literary criticism and several hundred books on religion still to shelve (insert long sigh here).

On the positive side, I'm going to have empty bookcases when I'm done shelving.  Room to expand! (Gulp.)

Comments

[Bourgeois Nerd]

Oooooooooh! Heaven, Little Prof! I'm in total awe and reverence.

[Belle]

Wow! Add impressed and envious! Room to spare; what a concept.

[Julie]

It's every bibliophile's dream! Amazing.

[j.]

you risk marriage proposals by putting up provocative photos like this.

[Rebecca]

Just Lovely, LP!

[Brian Ogilvie]

You did consult a structural engineer before putting those in, right? :-)

BTW, thanks for alerting me to LibraryThing. And why, might I ask, do you have a copy of the English translation of F. A. Wolf, Prolegomena to Homer?

[Clio Bluestocking]

Oooooooooh! Shelf-porn!

[richard]

This spring the 18th-C listserv discussed shelving practices in public and private libraries, and some of the older members (whose collections are therefore largest) argued forcefully for size-based book organization, with an index to make sense of it all.

LP, there's just a lot of extra space between your shelves, and I fear the enormous, enormous reorganization that may come five years into your future!

[mano]

It's possible I missed the boat on this one, so sorry if you've answered my questions somewhere else. Is that whole room devoted to books, or is there an office space somewhere in that same room? Do you organize your books alphabetically, by genre, or something else? How did you accumulate so many books--was part of it a brief stint working in publishing, or just buying lots of used books as a grad student? Have you read most everything you own? Do you buy mostly used these days?

Richard's suggestion sounds very good--I, too, fear the reorganization at what I'd guess to be your rate of accumulation!

[CCPhysicist]

Awesome. Simply awesome. But where are the Subject and Author index cards on the end of each row?

By the way, the comment about structural engineering is an important one. Books place a greater demand on a structure than almost anything else, particularly as they get further from a load-bearing wall.

Your house looks older, which is probably a plus in this case. New houses have wider spacings between joists and studs that probably would not handle that load.