I decided that my boxes of books and the wondrous new floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall bookshelves in our place had all been neglected long enough. So today I went carefully through the cardboard boxes remaining in the garage (where I hastily stacked many during the move up here from McKees Rocks), and I made sure I had located all my books. Previously, I’d been roughly placing books — that is, throwing them onto the bookshelves willy-nilly to make room for the business of life.
Well, today, I decided, was the day to organize the library. Julie’s classes start tomorrow, so she had a lot of preparatory work to do at her colleges. While she was out, I knew I could hurl the living room into chaos without being too disruptive. So here’s how I went about the herculean labor:
First, I went methodically through the shelves and pulled out any book related in any way to Tolkien — books by him, about him, about Middle-earth, etc. These, I placed along the bottom shelf. It’s a fairly impressive collection, but it’s by no means complete yet. I can think of several of my Tolkien books that are still buried in storage in Illinois. Most notably, Pictures by Tolkien and an amazing set of maps are still missing. Hmmf. Someday!
Next, I made a pass through and pulled out any homemade books — self-bound books of my own and my parents’ writing, and bound copies of friends’ work. I have special cabinets for saving these.
Our library at home
At this point, I realized that I needed to do an exhaustive organization. So, being pretty familiar with what was there, I made myself a set of twelve little slips of paper, each bearing the name of a category or classification. I positioned these around the room: several along the top of the buffet, one each on the two easy chairs, two on the sofa, and three on the floor. The classifications were (in no particular order):
1. fantasy
2. gothic and horror
3. Lovecraft
4. classical mythology
5. on writing
6. Japan
7. poetry
8. ecclesiastical (including Bibles)
9. folklore
10. Fortean studies
11. monster panic (Is this Japanese? This is the genre that, in Japan, means an animal or monster rampaging.)
12. literature
The two largest categories by far were fantasy and horror, followed closely by literature. Note: the Tolkien section was already in place, and is about as large as the literature collection.
It’s wonderful having them all together!
Julie’s books were already set up at one end of the shelves, so I wanted to work carefully and logically around them. I decided my “ecclesiastical” section should adjoin her library, both for a smooth transition and because there will likely be a lot of mutual use there — she may need to access my hymnals, etc.
Because the shelves are constructed to accommodate books of varying heights, I arranged the sections somewhat vertically. That is to say, some shelves allow for taller books, some only for shorter. And in any given category, there may be mass-market paperbacks (the little ones), trade paperbacks (the bigger ones), hardbacks, and even magazine-sized softcovers; so I couldn’t always arrange a section on the same shelf, end-to-end.
I put literature at the center of the wall. Tolkien is the base. Japan, books on writing, and poetry are high and to the right. Folklore is above. Lovecraft is high and to the left. Monster panic is hard to the left. Julie’s library is to the right and lower right. Fantasy and horror are the bridges: they blend Lovecraft and monsters into literature, and blend onward from there into the Church and into Julie. Fantasy forms a kind of arch over literature. I placed the more literary fantasies closer to straight-up literature. I shelved myself between Lord Dunsany and a hardback Cricket collection.
I considered the need for a section called either “nostalgia” or “adventure” — where does Jaws go? It’s too much a part of me to rest easily in “monster panic.” Where do the Planet of the Apes books go? I decided they were all part of fantasy in the broader sense. Annapurna is literature.
When she got home, Julie admired the library with me. To quote Field of Dreams:
Annie: Nice baseball field, Ray.
Ray: Kind of purty, isn’t it?
Julie says: 
fsdthreshold 
Marquee Movies 
Hagiograph 
Shieldmaiden 
Scott 
jhagman 
Morwenna