Latest / The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast / Episode 83: Shelf Control

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Episode 83: Shelf Control · The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast

0:12
SPEAKER_01: This is the Mooks and the Gripes podcast.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: Hello, everybody.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: This is Trevor, hyper-berberically Paul.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: Paul, how are you doing today?
0:21
SPEAKER_02: I'm doing well.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: I appreciated you editing that part out, but it was worth mentioning.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: Without your editing skills last week, I think people would have had a very low opinion of me by now.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: I...
0:35
SPEAKER_01: listeners Paul had a little bit of a of a speaking flub and I told him I wasn't
0:39
SPEAKER_01: going to edit it out I did but I couldn't let it go I couldn't let it all go I
0:45
SPEAKER_02: wouldn't expect you to no I would say generally speaking we do pretty well but yeah
0:50
SPEAKER_02: there are definitely those episodes I feel like me in particular where it requires
0:53
SPEAKER_02: the heavy editing hand you never know what word's gonna trip you up
0:59
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're just so excited to be here today.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: We recorded last week.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: We usually do these every two weeks, but since next week, we will not be able to record.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: We're back at it quite quickly.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: It's good to see you so soon.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to do these every week, Paul.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: I know, I would too.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: You want to quit your job and get everything so that we can?
1:19
SPEAKER_02: absolutely i think that all comes down to our patreon users so we're going to do a
1:24
SPEAKER_00: drive before we start this episode no that's right this episode is our is our drive
1:28
SPEAKER_00: our fundraising drive we need a few million dollars listeners that's it my wife
1:33
SPEAKER_02: talks about good back when she was little you know watching pbs you know public
1:37
SPEAKER_02: broadcasting here in the u.s and she'd be watching like anne of green gables and be
1:41
SPEAKER_02: so into it and then they'd cut away for like
1:43
SPEAKER_02: 40 minutes of fundraising and how frustrating that is i don't think we want to do
1:46
SPEAKER_01: that to people that's a good point that's a good point we don't we don't i don't
1:51
SPEAKER_00: want to do that to anybody no but i would love love love to be able to do this
1:55
SPEAKER_00: every week that sounds very appealing
1:58
SPEAKER_01: as it is it still is is super fun to come together and thanks everybody for so much
2:04
SPEAKER_01: good listener feedback on both the last episode but also on this episode um we
2:10
SPEAKER_01: actually used it to organize our whole conversation this time around um but before
2:16
SPEAKER_01: we get into it what have you been reading paul
2:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
2:20
SPEAKER_02: I just finished rereading George Saunders' wonderful book,
2:24
SPEAKER_02: Civil War Land and Bad Decline,
2:25
SPEAKER_02: which is just one of my favorites.
2:27
SPEAKER_02: And for some reason, it just kind of struck me that I wanted to revisit that one.
2:30
SPEAKER_02: So I did that over the last couple of days and really enjoyed it.
2:35
SPEAKER_02: And then just yesterday,
2:36
SPEAKER_02: as you know,
2:37
SPEAKER_02: Trevor,
2:37
SPEAKER_02: I finally was able,
2:39
SPEAKER_02: and I say finally,
2:39
SPEAKER_02: it's only been out for a few days,
2:40
SPEAKER_02: but I picked up Elisa Gabbard's latest essay collection,
2:44
SPEAKER_02: Any Person is the Only Shelf.
2:46
SPEAKER_02: So here I go again.
2:47
SPEAKER_02: Any person is the only self.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: And as I've mentioned before, her
2:52
SPEAKER_02: previous collection, The Unreality of Memory, was one of my very favorite books for the entire year.
2:56
SPEAKER_02: I think it was last year or the year before.
2:58
SPEAKER_02: So I was so excited that this one was coming out and we've had some interactions with her.
3:02
SPEAKER_02: She's just not only a fabulous writer, but a really kind and wonderful person.
3:07
SPEAKER_02: But I thought it was pretty interesting because I was reading it yesterday and I
3:10
SPEAKER_02: feel like there's a section
3:12
SPEAKER_02: in the first essay that ties in nicely to today's topic.
3:15
SPEAKER_02: So I thought I would just read a little snippet out of that.
3:18
SPEAKER_02: And she's talking about lockdown and COVID.
3:21
SPEAKER_02: And so she says,
3:23
SPEAKER_02: I decided I would buy almost no books that year and instead try to read the many
3:27
SPEAKER_02: books in our own library I hadn't gotten to yet.
3:30
SPEAKER_02: Our apartment in Denver had a long wall with no doors or windows,
3:33
SPEAKER_02: which we filled with a row of seven dark Billy bookcases from Ikea.
3:37
SPEAKER_02: I was proud of that wall of books, and anyone who entered our apartment always commented on its beauty.
3:42
SPEAKER_02: Every single maintenance guy who came to fix our toilet or replace an appliance
3:46
SPEAKER_02: over 10 years remarked on those shelves.
3:49
SPEAKER_02: We often sold books, but new ones came in, and the shelves were always at full capacity.
3:53
SPEAKER_02: There was a row of books on the very top of the shelves too,
3:56
SPEAKER_02: mostly reference texts and art books and anthologies.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: The rest was a mix of fiction and nonfiction arranged in alphabetical order by author.
4:05
SPEAKER_02: I'm always surprised when writers have no organizational system for their books or
4:08
SPEAKER_02: arrange them by color.
4:10
SPEAKER_02: Under our system,
4:11
SPEAKER_02: I can go to our shelves to see if we have a book John has acquired without my
4:14
SPEAKER_02: knowledge or own since before we met without having to know what it looks like.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: But also, I prefer the look of spines in random color patterns.
4:22
SPEAKER_02: This randomness looks beautiful to me, an aesthetic in itself.
4:26
SPEAKER_02: So I thought that was perfect.
4:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:29
SPEAKER_02: And also just reading that the first couple of essays in that collection,
4:33
SPEAKER_02: you had told me that you read it and thought I would love it.
4:36
SPEAKER_02: Not only is it Elisa Gabbert,
4:37
SPEAKER_02: who I just love the way she writes about anything,
4:39
SPEAKER_02: but so much of this is focused on reading books,
4:42
SPEAKER_02: literature,
4:42
SPEAKER_02: the life of the mind.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: creativity so i feel like it's a double whammy it's it's not only an author that i
4:49
SPEAKER_02: love but also some of these topics that are just catnip for me so yeah three or
4:53
SPEAKER_02: four essays and i'm yeah i'm loving every second of it so really excited to keep
4:56
SPEAKER_01: going with that one well and just to let you know i i don't think i can cut out
5:01
SPEAKER_01: that flub because it's too perfect for this episode exactly that's that's certainly
5:06
SPEAKER_01: the reason why you did it to yeah to tie it to the episode both in the title as
5:11
SPEAKER_01: well as the essay you chose so exactly
5:14
SPEAKER_02: It's just the way my mind is running, the self and the shelf.
5:17
SPEAKER_02: They all merge together anyway.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, I have been reading, and I just finished last night, Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever read this one?
5:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to remember.
5:31
SPEAKER_02: I know that it was around all the time in high school and college,
5:34
SPEAKER_02: and I don't think I ever did actually read it,
5:37
SPEAKER_02: though.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: I hadn't ever read it.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: My wife read it a while ago, and it is our June book club pick for the library book club.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: It'll work on my card.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: It's a banned book for some reason or another.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I just... I just... I don't know.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I thought this was excellent.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: I'd recommend it if you haven't read it.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: You'd be able to put it away in under two hours, I think.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: It's 110 pages, but a lot of them are...
6:05
SPEAKER_01: like this where it barely covers a quarter of the page, sometimes even less.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: So it's a speedy one, but very well done.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: Just snippets from a young woman's life growing up in this house that she,
6:20
SPEAKER_01: she doesn't like the house,
6:21
SPEAKER_01: but it's about her neighborhood.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: It's about some of the people it's about some of her experiences and really well
6:27
SPEAKER_01: done about her perception of things.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: This, the way it's written is amazing.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, it's very unique.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: It's very almost, yeah, that is how we sometimes think.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Even though I'm not this young woman,
6:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:41
SPEAKER_01: it was still very recognizable while also opening up the world a lot to me.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: And I'll read one of the little sections here.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: This is called Bums in the Attic.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: And it's, I want a house on a hill like the ones with the gardens where Papa works.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: We go on Sundays, Papa's day off.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: I used to go.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: I don't go anymore.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: You don't like to go out with us, Papa says.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: Getting too old?
7:06
SPEAKER_01: Getting too stuck up, says Nanny.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: I don't tell them I am ashamed, all of us staring out the window like the hungry.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm tired of looking at what we can't have.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: When we win the lottery, Mama begins, and then I stop listening.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth.
7:27
SPEAKER_01: They don't look down at all except to be content to live on hills.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: They have nothing to do with last week's garbage or fear of rats.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: Night comes.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: Nothing wakes them but the wind.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: Passing bums will ask, can I come in?
7:48
SPEAKER_01: I'll offer them the attic, ask them to stay because I know how it is to be without a house.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: Some days after dinner,
7:55
SPEAKER_01: guests and I will sit in front of a fire,
7:57
SPEAKER_01: floorboards will squeak upstairs,
8:00
SPEAKER_01: the attic grumble.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: rats they'll ask bums i'll say and i'll be happy oh wow i mean just just well done
8:10
SPEAKER_01: i mean there and it's a big variety of topics and episodes and things that happen
8:15
SPEAKER_01: but
8:16
SPEAKER_01: I thought that was short enough to give a flavor of what it's all about.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I thought that was an exceptional book.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to talk about it next week at Book Club.
8:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that sounds really good.
8:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like I said, that's one of those that was always on my radar.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: And it felt like it was one of those books that was assigned a lot,
8:38
SPEAKER_02: like I said,
8:39
SPEAKER_02: in school,
8:39
SPEAKER_02: which sometimes it's easy,
8:41
SPEAKER_02: as we've talked about,
8:41
SPEAKER_02: to kind of put those into a certain category in your head.
8:44
SPEAKER_02: Even though you and I, I think, try not to do that.
8:46
SPEAKER_02: But that's an example of one where you just reading that little bit is a great prompt.
8:50
SPEAKER_02: I think I might pick that one up very soon because I really loved that.
8:54
SPEAKER_02: And what, 84?
8:56
SPEAKER_02: I looked it up, 84.
8:57
SPEAKER_02: So it's been around for a while.
9:00
SPEAKER_02: But it's funny how some of those, even though you hear about them all the time, you just...
9:05
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
9:05
SPEAKER_02: It's so easy to kind of let certain books drift by you.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: I feel like it was in the same boat.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, my wife gets it and reads it.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: And I'm kind of like, I don't know what that's about.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: But in my head, I'd already categorized it in some way.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: And while it wasn't a place I wasn't wanting, like, I know that's a category I don't want to read.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: It was just like, oh, one day I'll be in the mood for that.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: But this was just refreshing and wonderful.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: You should join.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: our library book club, Paul, then this is just, you know, you would have read it by now.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: That's true.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: For the book club.
9:37
SPEAKER_02: It is one of those things that's so interesting is as protective as I am.
9:41
SPEAKER_02: And I assume we both are of our reading time and,
9:45
SPEAKER_02: you know,
9:45
SPEAKER_02: but it is nice to sometimes let something else kind of shape your reading a little
9:49
SPEAKER_02: bit because it can expose you to those things like we've talked about with our
9:52
SPEAKER_02: Twitter group reads or whatever the case may be.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: It's yet another example of that where you end up being touched by a book that you
9:58
SPEAKER_01: may have otherwise just kind of skipped right over.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sometimes they're not my favorite, but even then it's worthwhile to shake things up.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: And it's not like every book I read that I think I'm going to love turns out to be a favorite.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: It's almost just as likely in this kind of book club.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: I know there are some that I just wouldn't be able to stick with, but this one has been excellent.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: That's great.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: Do they put a quota on you of how many Brandon Sanderson books you can recommend per year?
10:28
SPEAKER_01: I don't have anything to do with the recommendations.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: Except for it is my wife who does so.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: But the state has a, this is I think really cool.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: It has a program here for libraries.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's for anybody.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't think you have to be,
10:43
SPEAKER_01: I think I could request these books for book clubs where you go online and they
10:48
SPEAKER_01: have
10:49
SPEAKER_01: a bunch of books available as well as a spreadsheet that shows you when they're available.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: So if someone else has got them for June,
10:58
SPEAKER_01: then it'll be blocked off for that month and you can put in your request and they
11:02
SPEAKER_01: mail you however many copies you need,
11:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure up to a,
11:07
SPEAKER_01: to an extent,
11:07
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what their max is or anything like that,
11:10
SPEAKER_01: but,
11:11
SPEAKER_01: And then you just mail them back when it's all over.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: And again, I know private book clubs do that quite a bit.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
11:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking of it in terms of the library,
11:19
SPEAKER_01: but so our books that we choose have all come from that excellent resource.
11:26
SPEAKER_01: It is amazing.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: I mean, over and over again, we've said it, but I just cannot believe libraries are real.
11:32
SPEAKER_02: They're just too good for this world.
11:34
SPEAKER_02: It's amazing all the stuff they do.
11:36
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
11:36
SPEAKER_02: you mentioned banned books and I might've talked about this before,
11:39
SPEAKER_02: but for example,
11:39
SPEAKER_02: I know that Brooklyn,
11:40
SPEAKER_02: library has made available e-memberships to anybody across the country kids and
11:46
SPEAKER_02: teens so that they can read any of these books that are maybe banned in their state
11:50
SPEAKER_02: I mean there's so many examples of just these amazing things that libraries
11:53
SPEAKER_02: continue to do so
11:56
SPEAKER_01: I can't say enough good things.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: It is excellent.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: And,
12:00
SPEAKER_01: and again,
12:01
SPEAKER_01: one thing that we'll talk about today,
12:02
SPEAKER_01: and maybe maybe now's the time to bring it up Paul we're talking about something a
12:07
SPEAKER_01: little bit different from a city library that has all these resources for everybody
12:12
SPEAKER_01: regardless of of
12:14
SPEAKER_01: where you're at in life,
12:16
SPEAKER_01: you know,
12:17
SPEAKER_01: you can get a library card and often find places of comfort and find books and
12:24
SPEAKER_01: other things too.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're going to talk about our home libraries and our bookshelves and recognizing that
12:34
SPEAKER_01: This isn't always a possibility for people to have a home library of any amount,
12:43
SPEAKER_01: let alone a large amount.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: It's always kind of fun to me when I find someone new on Instagram or on Twitter or
12:54
SPEAKER_01: something like that who's just getting into...
12:57
SPEAKER_01: into book reviewing and they've been big readers for a long time and they have
13:02
SPEAKER_01: really great and insightful things to say.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: And they talk about,
13:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:07
SPEAKER_01: maybe they get their first book from a publisher and they're thrilled because it's
13:11
SPEAKER_01: the first book they ever owned.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: They just use libraries, you know, because that's all that they can afford.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: And that makes perfect sense.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: So I do want to bring that up as we get into our thing.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: One of our listeners,
13:27
SPEAKER_01: Paola,
13:28
SPEAKER_01: sent us in a tweet about,
13:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:32
SPEAKER_01: something that maybe several of our listeners will be familiar with.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: And she may have it good relative to some as well.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: She says,
13:41
SPEAKER_01: in the humble realm of 200s,
13:43
SPEAKER_01: meaning how many books she has in her home library,
13:47
SPEAKER_01: and this is after we got plenty of tweets,
13:49
SPEAKER_01: which we'll get into with people with thousands of books.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: Living with roommates doesn't allow for lots of sprawl, so everything's in my room.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: And then she talks a little bit about organization,
14:00
SPEAKER_01: which we'll get into,
14:01
SPEAKER_01: publisher,
14:03
SPEAKER_01: alphabetical by order,
14:04
SPEAKER_01: all of that.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: But
14:05
SPEAKER_01: But like I say,
14:06
SPEAKER_01: I thought that it would be worthwhile to make a little bit of conversation about
14:12
SPEAKER_01: the various,
14:12
SPEAKER_01: and not just realities of life.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: Some people don't want to have books.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: Maybe because they've adopted the minimalist lifestyle,
14:24
SPEAKER_01: or maybe they make them stressed,
14:26
SPEAKER_01: or maybe for whatever reason,
14:30
SPEAKER_01: they want to have books come in and have books go as they read them.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: And,
14:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
14:37
SPEAKER_01: so again,
14:37
SPEAKER_01: we,
14:38
SPEAKER_01: you and I are probably fairly similar in our book,
14:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
14:44
SPEAKER_01: if not the way we organized,
14:45
SPEAKER_01: at least in our,
14:46
SPEAKER_01: we're,
14:46
SPEAKER_01: we're willing to let books come and,
14:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
14:49
SPEAKER_01: stay for a long time,
14:51
SPEAKER_01: make a home.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: Plenty, plenty of room for all of y'all.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: Always, always room for more.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: Even if there's not.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: And why don't we talk a little bit about that to start our conversation, you know, about bookshelves.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we'll title this episode Shelf Control, which sometimes means none at all.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: Right.
15:18
SPEAKER_02: No, absolutely.
15:19
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
15:19
SPEAKER_02: I can kick us off with just a great quote that a lot of people have probably seen
15:23
SPEAKER_02: from one of the most
15:25
SPEAKER_02: famous book collectors out there, the author Umberto Eco, who owned something like 50,000 books.
15:31
SPEAKER_02: I think a while back in one of our episodes,
15:33
SPEAKER_02: we talked about a video that circulates online where somebody asks him to go find a
15:37
SPEAKER_02: book and they're following with the camera and his library is the stuff of dreams.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: Speaking of Borges,
15:43
SPEAKER_02: it's like something out of that,
15:44
SPEAKER_02: but he's just wandering around,
15:45
SPEAKER_02: but he goes straight to the spot and he knows exactly where it is and he grabs that
15:49
SPEAKER_02: book off the shelf.
15:50
SPEAKER_02: But he had this to say about home libraries.
15:53
SPEAKER_02: It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy,
15:56
SPEAKER_02: as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able
16:00
SPEAKER_02: to read.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or
16:04
SPEAKER_02: screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.
16:08
SPEAKER_02: There are things in life that we need to have always plenty of supplies,
16:11
SPEAKER_02: even if we will only use a small portion.
16:14
SPEAKER_02: If,
16:14
SPEAKER_02: for example,
16:15
SPEAKER_02: we consider books as medicine,
16:16
SPEAKER_02: we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few.
16:20
SPEAKER_02: When you want to feel better, then you go to the medicine closet and choose a book.
16:24
SPEAKER_02: Not a random one, but the right book for the moment.
16:27
SPEAKER_02: That's why you should always have a nutrition choice.
16:30
SPEAKER_02: Those who buy only one book read only that one and then get rid of it.
16:33
SPEAKER_02: They simply apply the consumer mentality to books.
16:35
SPEAKER_02: That is, they consider them a consumer product, a good.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: I just love that.
16:45
SPEAKER_02: I mean, like you said, I understand the realities.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: And for some people, they do like to just have them come in and out.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: Not because they're just consumers and don't understand the beauty of books.
16:57
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to lump everyone into that category.
16:59
SPEAKER_02: But I do think that there is some truth in some cases to that mentality of almost
17:04
SPEAKER_02: like this stressful,
17:05
SPEAKER_02: like one in,
17:06
SPEAKER_02: one out,
17:06
SPEAKER_02: one in,
17:07
SPEAKER_02: one out.
17:07
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's almost like this...
17:10
SPEAKER_02: production line or something like that and I really loved what he said about
17:13
SPEAKER_02: finding the right book at the right time because I've found that so many times over
17:17
SPEAKER_02: the years with my own so anyway that's an absolutely wonderful quote that I wanted
17:21
SPEAKER_02: to I thought would be a good way to kick things off for us well
17:25
SPEAKER_01: Here's a question for you, Paul.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: And I think I probably know your answer.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: But why do we in this day and age need bookshelves to accomplish that?
17:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are, of course, libraries.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: But also,
17:39
SPEAKER_01: you can have digital access to more books than Umberto Eco had in his library at
17:46
SPEAKER_01: any time of day.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: And
17:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:49
SPEAKER_01: to accomplish the needs that he might have,
17:52
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:52
SPEAKER_01: with digital e-readers,
17:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:55
SPEAKER_01: and Libby,
17:57
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:57
SPEAKER_01: there's just,
17:59
SPEAKER_01: we don't need bookshelves just to,
18:04
SPEAKER_01: To have a lot of selection at our fingertips.
18:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: But I think there are other good reasons to have them for some of us.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: You know,
18:11
SPEAKER_01: again,
18:12
SPEAKER_01: I definitely want to make space and realize I don't want to sound like I'm talking
18:17
SPEAKER_01: down to people who don't feel this way because people are going to feel differently.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: But I love my bookshelves.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: I love having them.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: And so I wondered what your answer to that question might be.
18:30
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
18:30
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think there's several reasons.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, for one thing, I think it's just the idea.
18:36
SPEAKER_02: Later on, we'll mention a quote, but I'll jump ahead to it, just part of it.
18:40
SPEAKER_02: Our friend Nancy K.
18:41
SPEAKER_02: Shapiro said,
18:43
SPEAKER_02: books do furnish a one-bedroom apartment at one point,
18:45
SPEAKER_02: because that's what she has.
18:47
SPEAKER_02: The idea that just having these books around you,
18:49
SPEAKER_02: no matter how much size you have,
18:52
SPEAKER_02: as far as a living space,
18:53
SPEAKER_02: for many of us,
18:54
SPEAKER_02: having them around is a comfort.
18:56
SPEAKER_02: It is a way of decoration, but not just decoration.
18:59
SPEAKER_02: It's like having yourself surrounded by friends.
19:02
SPEAKER_02: It's an aesthetic that a lot of us just like to have.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: So I've talked about before,
19:05
SPEAKER_02: even if I'm sitting there working or watching TV or whatever,
19:10
SPEAKER_02: looking over at my bookshelves and just letting your eyes and mind kind of wander
19:14
SPEAKER_02: over the stuff you've read,
19:15
SPEAKER_02: the stuff you'd like to read.
19:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean, to me, that's a mental health perk for sure is just having them around.
19:23
SPEAKER_02: would also argue there's been a return to physical media you know with vinyl with
19:29
SPEAKER_02: uh you know books of course and other things you know dvds blu-rays um i think it's
19:37
SPEAKER_02: true that there's access to to most forms of media through the internet but to me
19:43
SPEAKER_02: there's still something very reassuring about having it there as
19:48
SPEAKER_02: Whereas like,
19:49
SPEAKER_02: you know,
19:49
SPEAKER_02: Kindle or whatever the case may be,
19:52
SPEAKER_02: Netflix,
19:52
SPEAKER_02: you know,
19:53
SPEAKER_02: something streaming your favorite,
19:54
SPEAKER_02: you know,
19:55
SPEAKER_02: Ozu is available all the time on Criterion.
19:58
SPEAKER_02: But in theory,
19:58
SPEAKER_02: if something happened with rights or something like that,
20:01
SPEAKER_02: you know,
20:01
SPEAKER_02: some of these things could disappear.
20:03
SPEAKER_02: And often when I'm looking for different films to watch,
20:07
SPEAKER_02: I'll try to find where it could be streamed and it's just not available right now.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: Um, so I think that there's still something to be said for that too.
20:14
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
20:14
SPEAKER_02: even some,
20:15
SPEAKER_02: so many of these books that I've,
20:16
SPEAKER_02: I have this Amazon wishlist that I've been,
20:18
SPEAKER_02: you know,
20:19
SPEAKER_02: updating just,
20:19
SPEAKER_02: I don't usually buy the books from Amazon,
20:21
SPEAKER_02: but I just use it as kind of like,
20:23
SPEAKER_02: when I find a new book I want to read,
20:24
SPEAKER_02: I just throw it on there.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: So I don't forget about it.
20:26
SPEAKER_02: That thing has been building for probably 15 or 20 years.
20:30
SPEAKER_02: And one thing that's kind of sobering about that is a lot of the books that I added,
20:34
SPEAKER_02: especially 20 years ago,
20:35
SPEAKER_02: but some of them,
20:35
SPEAKER_02: even a couple of years ago are no longer available.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: So I think that there's some realities to that,
20:42
SPEAKER_02: too,
20:43
SPEAKER_02: of just the idea that it's easy to take for granted that we have access to all
20:46
SPEAKER_02: these books.
20:46
SPEAKER_02: But that's not always true.
20:49
SPEAKER_02: So I think those are a couple of the things I think about.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I do know there are books that I have that I think I would have a hard time finding.
20:57
SPEAKER_01: Not everything,
20:58
SPEAKER_01: especially a lot of the stuff that we read,
21:01
SPEAKER_01: at least maybe books that were coming out 15,
21:03
SPEAKER_01: 20 years ago from a lot of our favorite publishers.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: I don't think they are.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: made into digital volumes yet.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: Maybe someday.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: You were talking about Pilgrimage, Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: I think some of those are, but not every one of them that I've been able to find.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: I could be wrong on that,
21:25
SPEAKER_01: but I do know someone helpfully sent over that they are available on Project Gutenberg.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: I like that website.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: You can read all of Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: But I'm not going to do that.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to sit on my computer or on my phone and read a text file.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: I use Project Gutenberg a lot to find quotes from classic books.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: I think I would have a hard time using that as my way of reading the book.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: I do like e-readers.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: I used to not.
21:59
SPEAKER_01: And then my wife got a Kindle a decade ago or something like that.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: And once, you know, I got an e-arc, you know, someone sent a book to read electronically.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: And I'd done that before, like on PDF or something like that.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't like the experience, even though I had done it.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: I actually really did enjoy using the Kindle.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: I thought that it was pleasant.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: And so I still read quite a few books on E-format,
22:28
SPEAKER_01: but it's never really threatened to get rid of my library here because I just like
22:36
SPEAKER_01: coming in and spending time with it.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: It's not the same as having,
22:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:41
SPEAKER_01: 10,000 books on an e-reader where I sometimes don't even have the covers or if I do,
22:49
SPEAKER_01: they're small and I don't know,
22:50
SPEAKER_01: I can't see how big they are.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: There's something about the sea of possibilities there.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: at your fingertips in a tangible way versus in a digital way.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: At least that's how my brain works right now.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: My kids may end up being quite different.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: I know brains develop differently with all this different stuff.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: But I like being able to come in and sit down and see things that I'm surprised I own,
23:16
SPEAKER_01: even though I've owned them for a while.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: I like the idea of having a place where people can come to feel that sense of possibility,
23:25
SPEAKER_01: whether it be friends.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: or my children.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea all the time if they come in here and are like, oh, I'd like to read that.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: In fact, my guess is that maybe my bookshelves to them are just a part of the wallpaper in some ways.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: We have places where we put their books and I hope that they're not like that.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: But I don't know if they ever come into my office and looked at all my
23:53
SPEAKER_01: my books and had any sense of like, Oh, someday I'll, I'll read that one.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: I don't, I don't know.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I do want that still.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: So, so I, but, but I, I agree with you.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: There's something comforting.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, I think I'm getting better at not being, you know, being made anxious by maybe getting rid of a book.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about book culling here in a bit.
24:21
SPEAKER_01: Um,
24:22
SPEAKER_01: I am better at that than I used to be,
24:26
SPEAKER_01: even though I know the reality is I may never get that book again.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: But I would always need a handy little selection,
24:37
SPEAKER_01: whether big or small,
24:39
SPEAKER_01: of physical books that I can thumb through and look at.
24:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree.
24:45
SPEAKER_02: I love the point you made about...
24:49
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like Netflix or something like that,
24:51
SPEAKER_02: where knowing you have access to all of these films is an amazing resource,
24:57
SPEAKER_02: but.
24:59
SPEAKER_02: it's like the difference between an Amazon and a bookstore,
25:01
SPEAKER_02: you know,
25:02
SPEAKER_02: you have access to almost anything on Amazon,
25:04
SPEAKER_02: but you have to kind of search it out or let the algorithms take you there.
25:07
SPEAKER_02: Whereas I still love the serendipity and what you'd like,
25:10
SPEAKER_02: you said,
25:10
SPEAKER_02: just the realities of a physical bookstore for the exact same reasons where,
25:16
SPEAKER_02: like you said,
25:16
SPEAKER_02: you're just scanning the shelves and you see things you forgot you had,
25:19
SPEAKER_02: or,
25:20
SPEAKER_02: or that you didn't even know were up there.
25:22
SPEAKER_02: And it's that same idea of,
25:25
SPEAKER_02: I guess serendipity is the word I keep coming back to,
25:27
SPEAKER_02: but it's the idea of it's not something that's being dictated to you from someone
25:30
SPEAKER_02: else or from an algorithm or something you have to specifically search out.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: It's the idea of having all of it just laid out before you.
25:38
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
25:39
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of value to that, I think, for sure.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that experience can be mimicked sometimes.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: but not duplicated online.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: I know a lot of independent book places do try to set up the website to mimic that,
25:56
SPEAKER_01: and probably even Amazon to some extent tries that, but it's, it's just not the same.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: No, it just, it just isn't at least again, at least for, for me.
26:05
SPEAKER_02: No, I agree.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
26:06
SPEAKER_02: and we have lots of great feedback from listeners about their,
26:12
SPEAKER_02: you know,
26:12
SPEAKER_02: libraries,
26:13
SPEAKER_02: but before we do that,
26:14
SPEAKER_02: do you want to just quickly describe,
26:15
SPEAKER_02: you know,
26:16
SPEAKER_02: however briefly you want to,
26:17
SPEAKER_02: what,
26:18
SPEAKER_02: how do you organize your book?
26:19
SPEAKER_02: Like where are your bookshelves?
26:21
SPEAKER_02: What is your philosophy?
26:22
SPEAKER_02: Do you have them in every room?
26:23
SPEAKER_02: Do you have them in only in your study?
26:24
SPEAKER_02: That kind of thing.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: So we do have them in quite a few places.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: We have some shelves downstairs in the basement that are more general,
26:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:35
SPEAKER_01: whether they're children's books,
26:38
SPEAKER_01: middle grade reader,
26:39
SPEAKER_01: YA,
26:40
SPEAKER_01: a lot of those are downstairs where the kids can look at them.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: And we have some shelves on our wall down in the basement.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: I have kind of long walls down there.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: And on one of them, we put just little, I don't know, two inch shelves with a lip.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: um that we can go down and and swap out books that face forward oh those are um and
27:03
SPEAKER_01: so there's a selection of children's books middle grade books and you know as the
27:08
SPEAKER_01: kids get older um you know any kind of book that i think might be fun and they they
27:13
SPEAKER_01: help sort those sometimes sometimes we forget you know the same books sit up there
27:17
SPEAKER_01: for for some time but it's really fun i still like
27:20
SPEAKER_01: I like it just as a thing that's,
27:22
SPEAKER_01: um,
27:22
SPEAKER_01: you know,
27:23
SPEAKER_01: again,
27:23
SPEAKER_01: just for an,
27:25
SPEAKER_01: an aesthetic appeal,
27:27
SPEAKER_01: it's,
27:28
SPEAKER_01: it's catchy for me still.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: I like going down and sitting on the couch and looking over that direction and
27:33
SPEAKER_01: seeing the,
27:34
SPEAKER_01: the various books facing outward as a,
27:38
SPEAKER_01: as a sea of possibilities,
27:40
SPEAKER_01: you know?
27:40
SPEAKER_01: And so that's, that's downstairs and, and,
27:44
SPEAKER_01: A couple of my kids have shelves in their rooms that are,
27:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
27:50
SPEAKER_01: my 15-year-old has a budding shelf of Stephen King novels,
27:58
SPEAKER_01: much to my wife's disappointment.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: Right.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: And then my younger son, who is 12...
28:06
SPEAKER_01: has a shelf of the, of Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere novels.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: Um,
28:11
SPEAKER_01: he was reading those,
28:12
SPEAKER_01: just checking them out from the library and finally was like,
28:14
SPEAKER_01: I would like these.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: I want to be able to keep looking at them.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: And that broke your heart.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: I was disappointed.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I have, we have our living room where we put a lot more of our, um,
28:29
SPEAKER_01: maybe books that we have tried because we love them so much to get really pretty
28:33
SPEAKER_01: editions of or collections of,
28:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:35
SPEAKER_01: Jane Austen books are out there.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: Some of our nicer hardbacks of books, you know, things like that.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: And they're sorted with room to breathe.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: Is this a good time to bring up your post?
28:53
SPEAKER_01: So, well, okay, let me talk about our bedrooms.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: My wife has a few, you know, on her bedside table.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: My bedside table gets overcome quite often with books that come in that I'm like,
29:05
SPEAKER_01: these are the ones I'm going to read next,
29:06
SPEAKER_01: you know,
29:07
SPEAKER_01: and then there's,
29:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
29:08
SPEAKER_01: eventually 50 or 60 on it.
29:09
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I can't read 50 or 60 of these next in my closet.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: I have books just stuffed in there that are also the books I'm going to read next.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: There may be a couple hundred in my closet.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: In my bedroom.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: But then I do have my study where I have...
29:27
SPEAKER_01: It's not under complete control because I also put a bunch of books that I'm going
29:31
SPEAKER_01: to donate or take to friends on the floor.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: And I haven't done that in a while.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: So I probably have a hundred of those on the floor now.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: stacked and then a box that probably has 50 that's going to the, to the donation place.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: But I do have my, my, what, you know, our shelves that we built in and framed in and all of that.
29:55
SPEAKER_02: Which are beautiful.
29:56
SPEAKER_02: I might add for everybody listening that can't see it's the, I always,
30:00
SPEAKER_02: It fills me with peace every time we record because I can see all your beautiful
30:03
SPEAKER_02: shelves in the background.
30:04
SPEAKER_01: And I do love that.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: That was something that was very exciting to get put into place.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: And then I have a small cart too, which much like Culver Reader.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: who talked about,
30:17
SPEAKER_01: she owns,
30:19
SPEAKER_01: I own about 1700 books all over the house,
30:22
SPEAKER_01: mostly shelves,
30:23
SPEAKER_01: but some stacks as well.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: Fiction in alphabetical order and nonfiction and clusters by subject.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: Biggest nonfiction collection is books about books.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: It's fun.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: Libraries, bookstores, and reading.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: My husband is a humanities instructor, so we have lots of history and art as well.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: I will buy with little culling, usually only arcs.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: As a librarian, I generally also have 20 to 30 library books checked out.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: Those go on a small cart in my home library.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: my books are cataloged on library thing,
30:55
SPEAKER_01: which has vastly helped with my previous bad habits of buying duplicates.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: I am really looking forward to the upcoming episode.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm excited.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot there that Culver reader brings up, but I, I also bought one of those little Ikea carts.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: My wife got me one.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: She has it in her sewing room for fabric and stuff.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: And Simon Savage has one or two or 10 that he sometimes has in his videos.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
31:26
SPEAKER_01: it sits over there with more of the books that are kind of fresh arriving that I
31:31
SPEAKER_01: need to go through and catalog and all of that.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: But
31:34
SPEAKER_01: If I don't keep up on it, it only takes a week or two before this just becomes unmanageable.
31:39
SPEAKER_01: But fortunately,
31:40
SPEAKER_01: I really like managing it,
31:43
SPEAKER_01: unless it gets really bad,
31:44
SPEAKER_01: which for the last couple of months I've had on my to-do list,
31:47
SPEAKER_01: finish organizing the library.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: Right.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: And it's only getting a little bit worse.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: But that's where I'm at.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't count.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have any desire to count.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: But I did count one shelf and then kind of run it through.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: And I probably have 2,000 to 3,000 books in the home.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: And I probably get rid of 400 or 500 books a year when we get to culling.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: Maybe even a little more than that.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: Just given arrivals and...
32:20
SPEAKER_01: you know, it really does come to some of the realities.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: This is a different,
32:23
SPEAKER_01: different side of the realities is I do get a lot of books that I both buy and,
32:29
SPEAKER_01: and,
32:30
SPEAKER_01: and,
32:30
SPEAKER_01: um,
32:31
SPEAKER_01: get for,
32:31
SPEAKER_01: for all of that,
32:32
SPEAKER_01: but I get a lot of books from publishers.
32:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, and many that, you know, most, I would say I don't, I don't ask for and many that I do.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: And it just, I can't, I figured out, especially after judging the best translated book award, um,
32:49
SPEAKER_01: I can't do this.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, we'll get into that in a bit, you know, the book Culling to Keep Your Shelf Control.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: But beforehand, I'd like to hear a little bit more about yours.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure.
33:02
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, so we have...
33:06
SPEAKER_02: Bookshelves, like you said, kind of all over the house.
33:10
SPEAKER_02: Our boys' rooms have always had bookshelves,
33:14
SPEAKER_02: and they've kind of kept a lot of their younger books that they still have good
33:19
SPEAKER_02: memories about.
33:20
SPEAKER_02: But of course, their tastes have changed over the years.
33:23
SPEAKER_02: So my younger son,
33:25
SPEAKER_02: who's still living at home,
33:25
SPEAKER_02: has a bookshelf hanging on the wall that my grandpa actually built years and years ago,
33:30
SPEAKER_02: which makes me happy that it's still around.
33:32
SPEAKER_02: And that's filled with all of his kind of
33:35
SPEAKER_02: current reads.
33:36
SPEAKER_02: And then he has kind of some Ikea type cubes along the wall that are filled with a
33:41
SPEAKER_02: combination of library books and,
33:44
SPEAKER_02: you know,
33:44
SPEAKER_02: various other books that are shoved in there.
33:46
SPEAKER_02: So he's definitely got a good collection going.
33:49
SPEAKER_02: My son who moved out, just due to the realities, we live in a, you know, relatively small house.
33:54
SPEAKER_02: And so
33:55
SPEAKER_02: Where I'm recording now used to be his bedroom.
33:58
SPEAKER_02: So a lot of his books now are currently in boxes, or he has some of them up at his apartment in Greeley.
34:04
SPEAKER_02: He's in kind of that transitional phase that we all go through,
34:07
SPEAKER_02: and probably some of our listeners can relate to where you're
34:10
SPEAKER_02: not really in one home base.
34:12
SPEAKER_02: And so you can't really build out your bookshelves,
34:15
SPEAKER_02: maybe the way you'd like them,
34:16
SPEAKER_02: but he's making do the other day.
34:17
SPEAKER_02: I sent him a gift card to a bookstore up in Greeley and he sent me a picture of
34:23
SPEAKER_02: like the five new books that he has.
34:24
SPEAKER_02: So he's kind of in that transitional mode,
34:26
SPEAKER_02: but he stalls lots of his beloved books in our garage waiting for him whenever he
34:29
SPEAKER_02: gets a little more stable.
34:31
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, in our living room, we have kind of these built-in shelves, um,
34:36
SPEAKER_02: recessed shelves I guess you'd say above our TV where we keep kind of what you were
34:39
SPEAKER_02: describing like the the nicer prettier books like our Easton presses and some of
34:44
SPEAKER_02: the folio societies in the post for this
34:49
SPEAKER_02: episodes and people might've seen, I have like the folio Proust that are just gorgeous.
34:53
SPEAKER_02: So we have some of those sitting up there and then over on the wall from there,
34:57
SPEAKER_02: we have three bookshelves that,
35:00
SPEAKER_02: um,
35:00
SPEAKER_02: you know,
35:01
SPEAKER_02: are just jam packed,
35:02
SPEAKER_02: honestly.
35:02
SPEAKER_02: Like I'm starting to face the realities of like our house is only so big and, and,
35:09
SPEAKER_02: battling between aesthetics and what I would like to do.
35:12
SPEAKER_02: So the nicest looking shelf I have is probably one entire shelf that's all my NYRB classics,
35:17
SPEAKER_02: which I've posted some pictures of before.
35:20
SPEAKER_02: And those are all in alphabetical order.
35:22
SPEAKER_02: That's probably the only place in my entire collection that I actually do stick by
35:26
SPEAKER_02: to alphabetical order by the author is my NYRBs.
35:29
SPEAKER_02: The rest of mine are kind of one part organized, one part chaos.
35:33
SPEAKER_02: So we'll get into like how they're organized a little bit more
35:36
SPEAKER_02: as we talk about other people.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: And then in our bedroom,
35:39
SPEAKER_02: we also have two more big bookshelves that are,
35:43
SPEAKER_02: you know,
35:43
SPEAKER_02: same thing,
35:44
SPEAKER_02: kind of relatively organized.
35:46
SPEAKER_02: Most of my books are on shelves, but I definitely do have some stacks on the floor, like you described.
35:51
SPEAKER_02: Those tend to be newly acquired books that I'm still figuring out how to shelve or where to put them.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: But I will say,
35:59
SPEAKER_02: and this is something that we can talk about again a little bit more,
36:02
SPEAKER_02: I like having some of the newly acquired books
36:05
SPEAKER_02: out in stacks because it's just kind of exciting.
36:09
SPEAKER_02: And it kind of,
36:10
SPEAKER_02: depending on how you got them and where you got them,
36:12
SPEAKER_02: it's kind of like,
36:14
SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
36:14
SPEAKER_02: like for Christmas or birthday,
36:16
SPEAKER_02: I'll put my stack of new books somewhere and just kind of let them sit there for a
36:19
SPEAKER_02: while because I just,
36:20
SPEAKER_02: they make me happy to look at them.
36:22
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I'd say I probably, same thing.
36:24
SPEAKER_02: I do use library thing.
36:27
SPEAKER_02: And so I have a semi-accurate count,
36:28
SPEAKER_02: but the one thing I'll say is when I call books,
36:30
SPEAKER_02: I'm not very good about removing them from library thing because
36:33
SPEAKER_02: And so I don't know how accurate, but I would guess I'm, I'm over 2000 books, just, just our library.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: And that's not including the kids.
36:40
SPEAKER_02: So probably like you said, somewhere between two and 3000 in the house would be my guess as well.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: And it can feel overwhelming.
36:50
SPEAKER_01: I know at times, especially when you're like, Oh, I want to get more.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: Right.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: How do we do all this?
36:57
SPEAKER_01: Um,
36:58
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, so you solicited a lot of this listener feedback.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: Excellent job on both Twitter and on Instagram.
37:05
SPEAKER_01: And I was surprised.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: to see someone comment on your Instagram post.
37:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I thought you might be.
37:13
SPEAKER_02: I wanted to wait a little while to make sure that,
37:15
SPEAKER_02: yeah,
37:16
SPEAKER_02: all was well,
37:16
SPEAKER_02: but everything was well between the two of you.
37:18
SPEAKER_02: No, your wife, Sherry, was kind enough to weigh in when I asked about this topic.
37:23
SPEAKER_02: Do you want me to go ahead and read it, or do you want to?
37:26
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'll read it.
37:27
SPEAKER_02: She says...
37:28
SPEAKER_02: Mooks and I are not similar in our book habits.
37:31
SPEAKER_02: I prefer organized shelves with room for books to breathe.
37:34
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what the implication of that one is.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
37:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm reading between the lines here.
37:39
SPEAKER_02: She says they don't have to match perfectly by category,
37:42
SPEAKER_02: but they should be able to have a conversation with their shelf mates.
37:45
SPEAKER_02: If a book stays on my TBR pile for over a year, I usually donate.
37:50
SPEAKER_02: And I prefer to get as much from the library as possible,
37:52
SPEAKER_02: only buying favorites,
37:53
SPEAKER_02: which is why Trevor has his office and closets and nightstand to keep his books.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: She's very patient with me.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: My wife is too.
38:07
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, you know, organized shelves.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: So here's how I organize my office shelves.
38:14
SPEAKER_01: The ones in the bedroom, they're just, you know, like I say, they're books that I need to put somewhere.
38:18
SPEAKER_01: And so there they go.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: But once they move in here onto my shelves,
38:21
SPEAKER_01: I have a few rows that go across the whole room of NYRB classics.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: I've been collecting those for a long time now.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't have them all, but I'm not that far from it.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: And so those are all on my shelves organized alphabetically by author's last name.
38:45
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: except for Dante, who goes with the Ds always.
38:51
SPEAKER_01: See, there's always those exceptions.
38:54
SPEAKER_01: But then above that, I have more of my general books.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: So I start with A at the back of the shelf, and I just work my way through.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: And it is a mixture of fiction and nonfiction.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: The other thing that I do sometimes, I used to pull out my Library of America copies,
39:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I did start integrating those more with the rest of the books, kind of like the idea.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: And I like the look of them just popping out on a shelf,
39:19
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:19
SPEAKER_01: here's my,
39:20
SPEAKER_01: here's my collection of Flannery O'Connor paperbacks and boom,
39:23
SPEAKER_01: there's the library of America,
39:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:25
SPEAKER_01: edition,
39:26
SPEAKER_01: um,
39:26
SPEAKER_01: And I really like that.
39:29
SPEAKER_01: But the shelves that I have are various sized.
39:33
SPEAKER_01: So I do have to break that sometimes.
39:35
SPEAKER_01: Like some of them are quite short and don't fit hardbacks.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, I broke away.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: So I do have like littler books or littler types of books.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: Like the New Directions Caesar Ira books are all in one place.
39:49
SPEAKER_01: Not with the A's, but their own little place on the shelf.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: A lot of my archipelago books can go there.
39:55
SPEAKER_01: A lot of my Pushkin press,
39:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:57
SPEAKER_01: those little classics go on that shelf just because they fit so well there.
40:01
SPEAKER_01: And those are still organized by some kind of type.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: But for the most part,
40:08
SPEAKER_01: or at least 75%,
40:10
SPEAKER_01: the intention is author's last name,
40:12
SPEAKER_01: regardless of genre,
40:16
SPEAKER_01: fiction,
40:17
SPEAKER_01: nonfiction.
40:18
SPEAKER_01: whatever it is.
40:20
SPEAKER_01: But it does come down to also where does this just physically fit on the shelf if
40:24
SPEAKER_01: it's a big book or little books get sorted differently because of that.
40:29
SPEAKER_02: There's those realities that make us, yeah.
40:31
SPEAKER_02: Well,
40:31
SPEAKER_02: that reminds me,
40:32
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
40:32
SPEAKER_02: when I read the Elisa Gabbard,
40:35
SPEAKER_02: I prefer the look of spines in random color patterns.
40:37
SPEAKER_02: This randomness looks beautiful to me and aesthetic in itself.
40:39
SPEAKER_02: And that reminds me of a comment we got from Ryan.
40:44
SPEAKER_02: He says, he describes his system as a whimsical system that appeals and is meaningful to only me.
40:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:51
SPEAKER_02: I absolutely love that.
40:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that perfectly describes what you just said and what Elisa Gabbert said.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: I thought my system made perfect sense, Paul.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: Perfect sense to everybody.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: You know, you could come in here and find...
41:05
SPEAKER_02: Yours actually does sound a lot more organized, but I love the exceptions.
41:10
SPEAKER_02: Some of them are based on reality, but some of them, like you said, the Library of America.
41:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I just like seeing that random pop in there, and I like that too.
41:18
SPEAKER_02: That's funny.
41:20
SPEAKER_01: Even those,
41:21
SPEAKER_01: though,
41:21
SPEAKER_01: they throw off the system because you can have a Library of America book that's
41:24
SPEAKER_01: women crime authors from the 50s.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: You can't put that in there by author's last name.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: That's true.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: Unless you just choose the first author and throw it in there.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: Same thing happens with Criterion,
41:35
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
41:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:36
SPEAKER_01: you think,
41:37
SPEAKER_01: oh,
41:37
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to do this by spy number,
41:39
SPEAKER_01: I'll do it by director,
41:40
SPEAKER_01: but then they have,
41:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:41
SPEAKER_01: dual packs of,
41:42
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:43
SPEAKER_01: for like the...
41:44
SPEAKER_01: the killers and, you know, anyway, anyway, yeah, these, these are problems.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, for sure.
41:51
SPEAKER_02: No, I love that.
41:52
SPEAKER_02: And when Sherry mentioned giving books room to breathe,
41:55
SPEAKER_02: I like that concept,
41:57
SPEAKER_02: but I have to admit I'm kind of unfamiliar with it.
42:00
SPEAKER_02: Your books suffocate.
42:02
SPEAKER_02: Mine would be, yeah, they would all be dead for sure.
42:05
SPEAKER_02: Because just the realities of what I was talking about, I will just touch a little bit more on mine.
42:09
SPEAKER_02: So I,
42:10
SPEAKER_02: I mean, yours sounds a lot more organized.
42:13
SPEAKER_02: Like I said,
42:13
SPEAKER_02: the only time I really do alphabetize is the NYRBs,
42:16
SPEAKER_02: but the rest of it is some mishmash of a lot of the small publishers,
42:22
SPEAKER_02: the Archipelagos,
42:22
SPEAKER_02: Charcos,
42:23
SPEAKER_02: Open Letter,
42:24
SPEAKER_02: New Directions.
42:25
SPEAKER_02: I try to keep those grouped together for the most part, but of course there are exceptions.
42:29
SPEAKER_02: So they're all together,
42:31
SPEAKER_02: but within those clusters,
42:32
SPEAKER_02: there's really no organization other than that they all look nice together.
42:37
SPEAKER_02: I have a shelf of archipelagos, for example, that are all horizontal just for the sake of space.
42:43
SPEAKER_02: But they're all together, at least.
42:44
SPEAKER_02: But within that, there's other than I'll group like the actual books by a specific author.
42:49
SPEAKER_02: I'll make sure they're all together within that pile.
42:52
SPEAKER_02: But other than that, there's not much order to it.
42:55
SPEAKER_02: And that's probably a good description of most of the rest of my shelves is I try
42:59
SPEAKER_02: to keep authors books together.
43:03
SPEAKER_02: And occasionally there are things that make sense.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: Like I try to keep some of my nonfiction,
43:08
SPEAKER_02: like my nature books are kind of in the same general area,
43:12
SPEAKER_02: but there's plenty of outliers that have made their way to other parts of the library.
43:16
SPEAKER_02: So yeah,
43:17
SPEAKER_02: it's a little bit of,
43:18
SPEAKER_02: there's some thought and I mean,
43:20
SPEAKER_02: there's a lot of thought actually that goes into it,
43:22
SPEAKER_02: but I would say that the realities are that it's quite a bit of chaos,
43:25
SPEAKER_02: but I kind of,
43:26
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
43:26
SPEAKER_02: I like it.
43:27
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting.
43:29
SPEAKER_02: Usually when I, I won't say that I have the same ability of Umberto Eco.
43:33
SPEAKER_02: If somebody asked me for a book,
43:34
SPEAKER_02: I can't always go straight to it,
43:35
SPEAKER_02: but I would say eight times out of 10,
43:37
SPEAKER_02: I can.
43:39
SPEAKER_02: And then those other two times I actually enjoy the wild goose chase.
43:42
SPEAKER_02: Well,
43:45
SPEAKER_01: I really liked the way that you talked about keeping certain types of like books
43:49
SPEAKER_01: that you acquired together for a period of time.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: And it did remind me of one of our Twitter friends, ways to organize, um,
43:58
SPEAKER_01: And this is Ricardo Chavira.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: Hey, Ricardo.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: So nice to get this from you.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: We'll go through the first part of his tweets.
44:08
SPEAKER_01: He sent a few tweets, but it's the last one that kind of struck a chord with me with what you just said.
44:14
SPEAKER_01: But I don't want to leave out the rest of it.
44:16
SPEAKER_01: He says, I deliberately don't keep close track.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: But I think we're in the 1600 range.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: Probably not, Ricardo.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: You're probably getting up to 3,000 or 4,000.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: I was going to say, any estimate like that is exactly for sure.
44:29
SPEAKER_01: Organizationally, fiction and poetry is alpha by our author.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: Philosophy, chronological, nonfiction is a mess.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: Call it whimsy.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what we're doing.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: The shelves are pretty tidy and full now.
44:43
SPEAKER_01: But there are stacks on tables and sideboards throughout the house.
44:47
SPEAKER_01: They slowly get absorbed into the TBR shelves as room allows.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm an enthusiastic buyer and reluctant to color.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: That should be on my gravestone.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: I sometimes justify, rationalize the piles because they are often the latest acquisition.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: This pile I got from Powell's.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: this pile from my last trip to Chicago and they evoke the places I visited and where I found them.
45:14
SPEAKER_01: And I love that.
45:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:17
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
45:18
SPEAKER_02: No, that's beautiful.
45:19
SPEAKER_02: And that is very true of what I was just describing.
45:22
SPEAKER_02: When I come back from a work trip and I have a pile of five or 10 or however many,
45:27
SPEAKER_02: in the case of Zola,
45:28
SPEAKER_02: 18 books,
45:29
SPEAKER_02: I love to have them sit up for a while,
45:31
SPEAKER_02: like I was saying.
45:31
SPEAKER_02: And it just reminds you of the trip.
45:33
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes you leave some bookmarks in there.
45:35
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
45:36
SPEAKER_02: The idea of book stacks is memory and memento.
45:41
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: I thought that was fantastic.
45:44
SPEAKER_01: And I'll do similar things,
45:46
SPEAKER_01: um,
45:46
SPEAKER_01: I guess for a period of time until they do get,
45:48
SPEAKER_01: you know,
45:49
SPEAKER_01: eventually escorted into the,
45:52
SPEAKER_01: into the,
45:53
SPEAKER_01: the shelves,
45:54
SPEAKER_01: um,
45:55
SPEAKER_01: where they start to suffocate.
45:56
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I, I did like that, you know, maybe, maybe calling that a way to organize it isn't right.
46:04
SPEAKER_01: Cause that might be the justification for the piles.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: Um,
46:08
SPEAKER_01: But I do think that that's a lovely side effect that maybe was a surprise at one time of
46:14
SPEAKER_01: being able to recall those voyages as you went back to those stacks.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: I think that's really fun.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
46:25
SPEAKER_01: that's maybe another thing with having physical books is they can evoke memory in a
46:29
SPEAKER_01: way that I don't ever have with digital books.
46:32
SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
46:33
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
46:34
SPEAKER_02: not to keep bringing up Elisa Gabbert,
46:35
SPEAKER_02: but even in that same essay,
46:36
SPEAKER_02: she talks about getting books from the library and finding little bits of chocolate
46:40
SPEAKER_02: or receipts.
46:41
SPEAKER_02: And she said that in her own books, like if she's
46:44
SPEAKER_02: reading over stuff that she's read in the past,
46:46
SPEAKER_02: seeing a little dab of chocolate that she might have left there 10 years ago.
46:52
SPEAKER_02: It's a beautiful experience.
46:55
SPEAKER_01: All right.
46:56
SPEAKER_01: Well,
46:57
SPEAKER_01: we do have,
46:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:59
SPEAKER_01: if anybody's starting to feel a little bit bad about,
47:02
SPEAKER_01: oh man,
47:03
SPEAKER_01: my books are out of control.
47:06
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we have some listener feedback that will help you feel better about that situation.
47:15
SPEAKER_02: You're not alone.
47:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:17
SPEAKER_02: You want me to kick off with the top one?
47:19
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
47:24
SPEAKER_02: He says, I own thousands.
47:26
SPEAKER_02: I've completely lost count.
47:27
SPEAKER_02: They're stacked, shoved, crammed into place.
47:30
SPEAKER_02: They're in almost every room in the house.
47:32
SPEAKER_02: It's a complete mess.
47:34
SPEAKER_02: In rough alphabetical order by author's last name, unless it's a bio, and even then there are exceptions.
47:39
SPEAKER_02: For instance, I keep Paul Oster's Stephen Crane bio with Oster, not Crane.
47:43
SPEAKER_02: No one should follow my example.
47:44
SPEAKER_02: Get out while you can.
47:46
SPEAKER_02: Also, I separate NYRB and Valancourt from the rest and then alphabetize by author.
47:51
SPEAKER_02: So he's like us on that one.
47:53
SPEAKER_02: Oh, and I have bookshelves set aside for writers who are important to me.
47:56
SPEAKER_02: But apart from keeping individual authors together and trying to group together the
47:59
SPEAKER_02: horror writers who are there,
48:01
SPEAKER_02: they are in no order whatsoever.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
48:05
SPEAKER_02: No one should follow my example.
48:06
SPEAKER_02: Get out while you can.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love that, too.
48:11
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I definitely go into some.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: I've never been to Bill's house, but I'm picturing some of those used bookstores where.
48:22
SPEAKER_01: How do they know what's in their inventory?
48:24
SPEAKER_01: Do they even know?
48:25
SPEAKER_01: Could they care?
48:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, if I just grabbed a whole stack and walked out, would they actually be like, oh, thank you.
48:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, that was about to fall.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
48:34
SPEAKER_01: We've been having that teeter for a while,
48:37
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:37
SPEAKER_01: just rows and rows and write the idea of books crammed.
48:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:43
SPEAKER_01: I don't think I could quite live that way in my home.
48:47
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I could,
48:48
SPEAKER_01: but I actually really like going into those places and having that,
48:52
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:52
SPEAKER_01: like,
48:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:53
SPEAKER_01: if you just put your hand in this crack,
48:54
SPEAKER_01: what might you pull out?
48:56
SPEAKER_02: You know, I've posted pictures of that, that bookstore.
48:59
SPEAKER_02: I always forget the name of it, but the one in new Orleans where it is literally like
49:02
SPEAKER_02: they're not even all turned out with the spines.
49:04
SPEAKER_02: But one thing I will say about Bill though,
49:06
SPEAKER_02: is from time to time over the years,
49:08
SPEAKER_02: he'll post pictures of like his cats and things like that.
49:11
SPEAKER_02: And, and you can see the bookshelves in the background.
49:13
SPEAKER_02: And I will say, I don't think it's anywhere near that level.
49:17
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I have always enjoyed seeing his bookshelves.
49:20
SPEAKER_02: Um,
49:20
SPEAKER_02: he's just always been a wonderful reader and collector.
49:23
SPEAKER_02: So, um, I, I always love seeing his bookshelf.
49:26
SPEAKER_02: So for whatever that's worth, they'll keep up the good work.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: And it kind of reminds me,
49:30
SPEAKER_01: well,
49:31
SPEAKER_01: while he didn't,
49:32
SPEAKER_01: didn't share it with,
49:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:33
SPEAKER_01: as a response to anything,
49:34
SPEAKER_01: but our friend Stuart,
49:36
SPEAKER_01: um,
49:36
SPEAKER_01: from Scotland,
49:37
SPEAKER_01: uh,
49:38
SPEAKER_01: he often posts pictures,
49:39
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:39
SPEAKER_01: he's very much into collecting series and,
49:42
SPEAKER_01: and,
49:42
SPEAKER_01: and types.
49:42
SPEAKER_01: And I love looking at his paperback,
49:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:45
SPEAKER_01: series or his hardback series of this or that,
49:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:48
SPEAKER_01: uh,
49:48
SPEAKER_01: Um,
49:49
SPEAKER_01: and they might,
49:53
SPEAKER_01: might not look,
49:54
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:54
SPEAKER_01: when he's,
49:54
SPEAKER_01: when he posts a whole bunch of them,
49:57
SPEAKER_01: um,
49:57
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if there's something about the,
49:59
SPEAKER_01: the organizing in,
50:01
SPEAKER_01: in that what you might call excess,
50:03
SPEAKER_01: even though I don't,
50:04
SPEAKER_01: I just mean like some people would look at that and think,
50:07
SPEAKER_01: oh,
50:07
SPEAKER_01: that's way too many books,
50:08
SPEAKER_01: but there's something kind of awesome about them.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I agree.
50:11
SPEAKER_02: I love it.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: But as we get back to the potential for excess,
50:16
SPEAKER_01: our friend Brad Bigelow from Neglected Books,
50:19
SPEAKER_01: he has a nice sophisticated way of doing this.
50:25
SPEAKER_01: He says, I like to practice Garakuta no Yama.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: which is sophisticated.
50:32
SPEAKER_01: It's the right thing, right?
50:34
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
50:34
SPEAKER_01: I think so.
50:36
SPEAKER_01: It says, or the Japanese art of stacking up crap.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: And then we posted a picture on Twitter.
50:42
SPEAKER_02: I love it.
50:44
SPEAKER_02: So funny.
50:45
SPEAKER_02: Now, when it comes to the idea of shoving, I don't shove.
50:49
SPEAKER_02: I try not to.
50:50
SPEAKER_02: But one concession I've had to make in recent years,
50:52
SPEAKER_02: just to the realities of limited space,
50:54
SPEAKER_02: is turning many of my books horizontally.
50:58
SPEAKER_02: stacking them as high as they'll go within the shelves and occasionally double stacking.
51:02
SPEAKER_02: So I am getting closer to that idea.
51:05
SPEAKER_02: It's not shoving because I still have very much respect for the books themselves,
51:10
SPEAKER_02: but I can see how it could happen.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: And we'll keep going with some of these that have people kind of getting into
51:18
SPEAKER_01: potential for,
51:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
51:20
SPEAKER_01: extravagance versus,
51:21
SPEAKER_01: I won't call it excess,
51:22
SPEAKER_01: extravagance.
51:23
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
51:25
SPEAKER_01: Angel Maru, there's a room just for the TBR books.
51:29
SPEAKER_01: I love that there's just a room.
51:31
SPEAKER_01: That's the TBR room.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
51:34
SPEAKER_01: Once I read them, I move them to another room.
51:38
SPEAKER_01: I try to wait until I read at least one book to go and buy more or until I read at
51:42
SPEAKER_01: least one book to go and buy more so that I can see my TBR room unclutter.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: I usually fail.
51:49
SPEAKER_01: And then there's library books, which don't count.
51:52
SPEAKER_02: Hey, that makes perfect sense to me.
51:54
SPEAKER_02: I follow that logic.
51:56
SPEAKER_02: from beginning to end.
51:57
SPEAKER_02: Here's another one from The Constant Gardener.
51:59
SPEAKER_02: It says, I've not counted for some time, but in the region of 6,000 books.
52:04
SPEAKER_02: Bookcases around the house kept in good order, but the study's a different tale.
52:08
SPEAKER_02: Time was, they were all neatly shelved by subject and author, but those days have long passed.
52:12
SPEAKER_02: Double, triple shelved, stacks on the floor.
52:16
SPEAKER_02: I dream of having a single well-shelved room where every book is neatly ordered,
52:20
SPEAKER_02: clearly visible,
52:21
SPEAKER_02: and easily accessible.
52:22
SPEAKER_02: Whatever happened, I fear.
52:25
SPEAKER_01: I think with 6,000 books, that would take some work.
52:30
SPEAKER_01: That would, yeah.
52:31
SPEAKER_01: Look at the bright side.
52:32
SPEAKER_01: You go have 50,000, you have a long ways to go.
52:36
SPEAKER_01: But again, there's beauty in what you've just described.
52:40
SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
52:41
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
52:43
SPEAKER_01: So,
52:43
SPEAKER_01: Paul,
52:44
SPEAKER_01: we mentioned there were several who alphabetize,
52:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
52:48
SPEAKER_01: author's last name,
52:48
SPEAKER_01: even if it's by,
52:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
52:51
SPEAKER_01: publisher like NYRB Classic.
52:52
SPEAKER_01: Several people wrote that they,
52:55
SPEAKER_01: if nothing else in their house,
52:56
SPEAKER_01: the NYRB Classics are organized alphabetically by author.
53:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
53:01
SPEAKER_01: But Sarah Gore, our friend, I really like her comment on this.
53:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:09
SPEAKER_01: You've surely seen this.
53:11
SPEAKER_01: You've surely seen this online.
53:12
SPEAKER_01: There are plenty of people on Instagram who do this way as well.
53:15
SPEAKER_01: But I also like what she talks about books,
53:17
SPEAKER_01: you know,
53:17
SPEAKER_01: the shelves being a bit of scenery for other people to enjoy while you're on Zoom.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: She says, I am on Zoom all day for work and I have a beautiful arrangement of books visible on screen.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: Mostly NYRB organized by color.
53:31
Yeah.
53:32
SPEAKER_01: Everywhere else they're on the floor crammed on shelves haphazardly,
53:36
SPEAKER_01: which again,
53:38
SPEAKER_01: we saw that an awful lot.
53:39
SPEAKER_01: But NYRB or anything organized by color, what are your thoughts on that?
53:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I personally...
53:47
SPEAKER_02: It's not the way I would choose to do it,
53:49
SPEAKER_02: except I will say with Sarah,
53:51
SPEAKER_02: it makes total sense because she made it a very logical decision.
53:54
SPEAKER_02: It's for Zoom background.
53:56
SPEAKER_02: I know for a fact that she reads them.
53:58
SPEAKER_02: So it's not just like what drives me crazy is when people buy books by the foot and like they buy them.
54:06
SPEAKER_02: I want one foot of red books, one foot of blue books like that to me.
54:10
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I get it.
54:12
SPEAKER_02: Fine, whatever.
54:13
SPEAKER_02: But that's not the same thing that we're talking about.
54:15
SPEAKER_02: But for Sarah, I think it's great because I know that she reads them.
54:19
SPEAKER_02: And so to me, that makes total sense.
54:22
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I would think if I was on a Zoom call with Sarah, I would love to have that as a background.
54:26
SPEAKER_02: And the only problem might be that I would be trying to Zoom in while she was talking.
54:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
54:31
SPEAKER_02: What title is that?
54:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
54:32
SPEAKER_02: No, I love that idea.
54:33
SPEAKER_02: And like she said, the rest of her books aren't necessarily following that, but I think it makes sense.
54:38
SPEAKER_02: I mean, like I said, just being on calls with you and seeing your background, I mean, I love that.
54:45
SPEAKER_02: It fills me with some peace.
54:46
SPEAKER_02: So I'm sure that the people on calls with her probably appreciate it too.
54:50
SPEAKER_01: And I do like, again, personally, aesthetically, the variety.
54:54
SPEAKER_01: But it's fun to see the books, the NYRB classics organized by color.
55:00
SPEAKER_01: I've seen plenty of pictures.
55:01
SPEAKER_01: I've never done it.
55:02
SPEAKER_01: I've never tried and thought, oh, let's just see what that would look like on my shelves.
55:06
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think I ever will.
55:09
SPEAKER_01: But...
55:10
SPEAKER_01: I do like that idea.
55:11
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a fun, a fun, a fun thing.
55:14
SPEAKER_01: So thanks for sharing that.
55:16
SPEAKER_01: And the only other thing I'll say value judgments weren't too harsh.
55:19
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
55:20
SPEAKER_02: No, hopefully I made it clear that was not against Sarah.
55:22
SPEAKER_02: Like I said, no, what I like is there's a randomness to that too.
55:28
SPEAKER_02: If you had a whole shelf full of yellow NYRB classics,
55:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
55:32
SPEAKER_00: that's kind of,
55:32
SPEAKER_02: there's a chaos within that as well,
55:34
SPEAKER_02: because you know that the variety of authors and titles would be very,
55:38
SPEAKER_02: very,
55:39
SPEAKER_02: different.
55:39
SPEAKER_02: So actually even within that seemingly organized system, there's a lot of chaos, which I like too.
55:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's true.
55:45
SPEAKER_01: I hadn't thought about that.
55:46
SPEAKER_01: There could still be pop, like there's my only purple one.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
55:50
SPEAKER_01: That is fun.
55:51
SPEAKER_01: And I certainly,
55:52
SPEAKER_01: when they organize it by color,
55:53
SPEAKER_01: um,
55:54
SPEAKER_01: I've seen that variety to most choose a rainbow pattern,
55:57
SPEAKER_01: but I have seen some deliberately choose like alternating opposites,
56:02
SPEAKER_01: which is kind of,
56:03
SPEAKER_01: kind of an interesting,
56:04
SPEAKER_01: uh,
56:05
SPEAKER_01: aesthetic choice.
56:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:07
SPEAKER_01: If, if not an organizational choice in my mind.
56:11
SPEAKER_01: For sure.
56:12
SPEAKER_01: Um,
56:13
SPEAKER_01: All right.
56:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:14
SPEAKER_01: Other ways of people organizing,
56:15
SPEAKER_01: though,
56:16
SPEAKER_01: you know,
56:16
SPEAKER_01: organizing by color,
56:17
SPEAKER_01: organizing alphabetically by author.
56:19
SPEAKER_01: We've we had a lot of people talking about publication house, which, you know, we've already touched on.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: But one of our good friends,
56:25
SPEAKER_01: Rad's pundit,
56:28
SPEAKER_01: she she says that I moved from a small flat where books were stacked on the floor
56:32
SPEAKER_01: to a larger place where all are now shelved.
56:34
SPEAKER_01: Congratulations on that.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that was a wonderful feeling.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: And it's just around 4000 books and double stacked.
56:43
SPEAKER_01: I've started reorganizing them by publisher.
56:45
SPEAKER_01: So far it looks pristine, but that could change since I keep buying but barely coal.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of books to have organized by publisher.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: That's what I was going to say.
56:58
SPEAKER_02: Having all those shelved, 4,000 books, that is very impressive.
57:03
SPEAKER_01: And like mine, again, they're the bursts of a publisher.
57:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
57:09
SPEAKER_01: You know, here are those where those are.
57:12
SPEAKER_01: But I'm curious, Rod, are all of those all all of them?
57:17
SPEAKER_01: You know,
57:17
SPEAKER_01: do you have even if you have only a handful or one or two from a certain publisher,
57:21
SPEAKER_01: do you also do those?
57:22
SPEAKER_01: And is that alphabetical by publisher?
57:25
SPEAKER_01: Good questions.
57:25
SPEAKER_01: Follow up questions here.
57:27
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
57:28
SPEAKER_01: But I think most of us are kind of more like Kushagri Tandon.
57:34
SPEAKER_01: who did respond to you and said about 750 books,
57:38
SPEAKER_01: mostly paperbacks with some hardcovers,
57:40
SPEAKER_01: love every man hardback classics and some rare collectibles from book fairs.
57:45
SPEAKER_01: And then again saying,
57:46
SPEAKER_01: I often arrange according to the publication house and then within that club by authors.
57:53
SPEAKER_01: So I did like that.
57:55
SPEAKER_01: And he also referred to the buying habits inspired by Umberto Eco.
58:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that's a common theme.
58:03
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
58:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
58:05
SPEAKER_02: those Everyman classics and some of those,
58:07
SPEAKER_02: it's again,
58:08
SPEAKER_02: those are definitely ones that I keep in a separate area by themselves because they
58:11
SPEAKER_02: all look so good together.
58:12
SPEAKER_02: But even so, like with the Penguin classics, you know, those beautiful black and orange spines.
58:17
SPEAKER_02: I do have that section too.
58:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I do.
58:19
SPEAKER_02: But then it does run into those things where you have like one Penguin classic by
58:24
SPEAKER_02: an author and all the others by...
58:26
SPEAKER_02: a different publisher.
58:27
SPEAKER_02: Do you keep that book with the penguin classics or do you migrate it over to be with its friends?
58:31
SPEAKER_02: You know, those are the questions.
58:33
SPEAKER_01: Just go buy the penguin classic if they have it.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: Right.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm in that right now with George Elliott.
58:40
SPEAKER_01: I, the first book I ever had by her, well, I had Silas Marner.
58:44
SPEAKER_01: I believe someone had gotten that for me in a signet classics.
58:48
SPEAKER_01: I don't know where that went.
58:49
SPEAKER_01: I may have gotten rid of it.
58:51
SPEAKER_01: But the first one I read was Adam bead and an old Oxford classics edition.
58:56
SPEAKER_01: And I've since then been buying them in Penguin Classics.
58:59
SPEAKER_01: But the Adam Bede that I have has the date I first read it.
59:02
SPEAKER_01: It has my original scrawls and little notes and annotations.
59:06
SPEAKER_01: But I'm really tempted to just go get the Penguin Classics of that so that I can
59:11
SPEAKER_01: have all of her books in Penguin Classics.
59:14
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're talking to an enabler, so you know what I'm going to say.
59:17
SPEAKER_02: Get the Penguin Classics and keep the other one for memories.
59:21
SPEAKER_01: That may be how it goes.
59:22
SPEAKER_01: Or just let the memories go.
59:24
SPEAKER_01: Are they...
59:26
SPEAKER_01: Are they that foundational to me?
59:29
SPEAKER_01: Or do I let someone else benefit from my college-aged marginalia?
59:37
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
59:38
SPEAKER_02: Someday that'll be in a museum, Trevor.
59:40
SPEAKER_02: You know that.
59:43
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I totally get the by publisher, but you're right.
59:47
SPEAKER_01: And even within those, they have a handful, as all of, say, Iris Murdoch in actual Penguin Classics,
59:55
SPEAKER_01: And even though Penguin publishes the other ones, they're not Penguin classics.
59:59
SPEAKER_01: They're like the orange ones or who knows what.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_01: There is no option to just say, oh, I'll buy them in that one.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_01: They don't release all of them that way.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_02: That's a whole different subject.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_02: You have almost a whole collection matching perfectly,
1:00:15
SPEAKER_02: but they decide to change their design or whatever.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_01: Paul...
1:00:21
SPEAKER_01: I don't want this to become a bad experience for you recording this morning.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_01: I need to go look at my bookshelves.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_01: Let's move on.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_01: Let's move on.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_02: Oh, we have one more in the categorization that I think is worth including.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_02: And I really like it.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_02: Random categories from QQQQQQ, who sends lots of comments and I always enjoy hearing from them.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_02: It says, yeah, stacks according to authors or a common theme, science, lady Brit authors,
1:00:50
SPEAKER_02: Coming of Age,
1:00:51
SPEAKER_02: and Batshit Crazy Ladies Stories,
1:00:53
SPEAKER_02: which I think is a hilarious way to categorize,
1:00:55
SPEAKER_02: titled lovingly,
1:00:56
SPEAKER_02: and you know they aren't that at all.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_02: And it says,
1:01:00
SPEAKER_02: think Treasure Island,
1:01:01
SPEAKER_02: the one with exclamation points in the title,
1:01:04
SPEAKER_02: Ride a Cock Horse,
1:01:05
SPEAKER_02: After Clawed,
1:01:06
SPEAKER_02: and Trebizond.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: So I think,
1:01:08
SPEAKER_02: yeah,
1:01:09
SPEAKER_02: talking about how each of these is a unique experience,
1:01:12
SPEAKER_02: I love that people are creating their own categories,
1:01:14
SPEAKER_02: including batshit crazy ladies.
1:01:18
SPEAKER_01: Oh, man.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I probably do that too.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we're looking at maybe interwar women authors or something like that.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_01: I do like the idea of them being together on the shelf.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_02: I agree.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_02: Again, these are personal libraries, so it makes total sense that
1:01:38
SPEAKER_02: If there's some eclectic categories or ways you think about things,
1:01:40
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:01:41
SPEAKER_02: it's your library,
1:01:41
SPEAKER_02: so those belong together.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_01: No, but then this is, it's been fun.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_01: And there is one more that we'll bring up about a way to organize that I've never tried,
1:01:52
SPEAKER_01: but I first ran into this at a bookstore in Manhattan called Idlewild Books,
1:01:57
SPEAKER_01: where they organized by country.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: And I was looking into this just a little bit,
1:02:06
SPEAKER_01: and none other than our good friend Michael Kitto has an article posted on Medium
1:02:13
SPEAKER_01: where it's called Organizing Your Personal Library.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_01: Fitting, you know.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_01: Michael, I'm excited about this.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_01: It was published back in February of 2017,
1:02:24
SPEAKER_01: but he was reading Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night,
1:02:28
SPEAKER_01: which you've brought up before in the past.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_02: I love it.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_01: All kind of about
1:02:33
SPEAKER_01: building up a personal library or well or organizing it if you acquire one or
1:02:38
SPEAKER_01: something like that um and then he gets into a variety of ways of of organizing you
1:02:44
SPEAKER_01: know that are recommended in the books alphabetically we've talked a lot about that
1:02:47
SPEAKER_01: by continent or country by color by date of purchase all of these are you know
1:02:54
SPEAKER_01: variations or directly on things that someone has said um by date of purchase i
1:03:00
SPEAKER_01: think of ricardo's um
1:03:03
SPEAKER_01: you know, keeping track of travels and such.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:03:06
SPEAKER_01: By date of publication.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_01: That's how I do within the authors, you know, alphabetically by author.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_01: And then within that, to the extent I do, you know, I'll be honest, my dad, not always that great.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_01: I always, that's something I save for later.
1:03:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, me too.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_01: That's what I aspire to.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:03:23
SPEAKER_01: But by date of publication, by format, by genre, by literary period, by language.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_01: According to our reading priorities.
1:03:31
SPEAKER_01: So maybe that part of the shelf are the next books,
1:03:36
SPEAKER_01: and this is the ones after that,
1:03:38
SPEAKER_01: and all the way to the ones I don't care about.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: According to their binding.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_01: And then by series.
1:03:46
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that can look at by publisher or series within a publisher's output.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_01: And he does say that the one that appealed to him is according to reading priorities,
1:03:58
SPEAKER_01: but that,
1:03:59
SPEAKER_01: that would just be a always changing.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_01: And so the, the way that he, he, the way that he picked was doing it by continent.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_01: And in particular,
1:04:10
SPEAKER_01: looking at,
1:04:12
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:04:12
SPEAKER_01: this,
1:04:12
SPEAKER_01: this helps him to see places where he is not reading or,
1:04:17
SPEAKER_01: and he,
1:04:17
SPEAKER_01: he loves to travel the world via books and,
1:04:20
SPEAKER_01: if all of a sudden he's got no books from South America or only a couple,
1:04:25
SPEAKER_01: then that might be something to start to fill in.
1:04:29
SPEAKER_01: For a goal of somebody who wants to read a lot of world literature,
1:04:32
SPEAKER_01: that might be the perfect way to organize your books because it does help highlight
1:04:38
SPEAKER_01: where you've got a lot and a lot of experience and where you don't.
1:04:42
SPEAKER_01: Though he acknowledges even within that,
1:04:44
SPEAKER_01: there are,
1:04:44
SPEAKER_01: of course,
1:04:45
SPEAKER_01: plenty of problems because you get Europe,
1:04:47
SPEAKER_01: but then what if all of Europe is...
1:04:49
SPEAKER_01: You know, just your English language, British books and the variance within that of what about Ireland?
1:04:58
SPEAKER_01: I know.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_02: No, I guess every one of these things, no matter how well intentioned, there's always ways to spin out.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that idea of organizing by country.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_02: And I feel like another New York bookstore, McNally Jackson, does a really nice job of that too.
1:05:12
SPEAKER_02: And when I've been to those bookstores,
1:05:15
SPEAKER_02: I absolutely am fascinated by that because it's just a different way of thinking.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_02: And maybe this is the way some people do think about it,
1:05:21
SPEAKER_02: but it makes me realize that I don't always group authors or books together in the
1:05:26
SPEAKER_02: most logical manner where Hungarian authors,
1:05:29
SPEAKER_02: for example,
1:05:29
SPEAKER_02: like maybe I don't necessarily always think of all of them sitting together like
1:05:32
SPEAKER_02: they do.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
1:05:34
SPEAKER_01: we got an email along this topic with pictures,
1:05:37
SPEAKER_01: with accompanying pictures from our good friend Stu,
1:05:40
SPEAKER_01: Stu Allen.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_01: And he also organizes his shelves by country.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe better.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: He loves the mass of his books,
1:05:51
SPEAKER_01: but wants to put them together in geographical,
1:05:54
SPEAKER_01: like Europe,
1:05:55
SPEAKER_01: and then subdivide it into countries all around the world.
1:05:58
SPEAKER_01: This is how his books were before he moved and needed to downsize his library.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_01: But Stu is a,
1:06:04
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:06:06
SPEAKER_01: reader of books around the world also and does talk about,
1:06:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: I've read from 120 countries,
1:06:13
SPEAKER_01: it's harder to find books from the remaining countries.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_01: Um,
1:06:17
SPEAKER_01: but again,
1:06:18
SPEAKER_01: there are organizing your books can help you fill in those gaps,
1:06:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:06:23
SPEAKER_01: almost become a little quest of something to do.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_01: And,
1:06:27
SPEAKER_01: and you're right,
1:06:27
SPEAKER_01: Stu,
1:06:28
SPEAKER_01: he says,
1:06:28
SPEAKER_01: I would imagine there are a few others,
1:06:30
SPEAKER_01: folks,
1:06:30
SPEAKER_01: a few other folks that may take my approach.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, there are more than a few people wrote in to say that.
1:06:39
SPEAKER_01: And then again, I found Michael's piece showing that he said that too.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_02: And it reminds me of our late friend,
1:06:46
SPEAKER_02: Jenny Colvin,
1:06:47
SPEAKER_02: who sadly passed away a couple of years ago,
1:06:49
SPEAKER_02: but she had the wonderful Reading Envy podcast.
1:06:51
SPEAKER_02: And I know that she was a voracious reader of books.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_02: reading, let's see how to say this.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_02: She loved to read around the world.
1:06:59
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:07:00
SPEAKER_02: she made a quest and she would specifically seek out and log reading different
1:07:05
SPEAKER_02: books from different countries.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_02: So yeah,
1:07:07
SPEAKER_02: just when you were saying that,
1:07:08
SPEAKER_02: it reminded me of her,
1:07:09
SPEAKER_02: which is,
1:07:09
SPEAKER_02: it's always makes me happy to think about her.
1:07:12
SPEAKER_02: But I love that idea of
1:07:14
SPEAKER_02: having an organized way of reading around the world.
1:07:16
SPEAKER_02: Because I do,
1:07:18
SPEAKER_02: we both read a lot of international fiction,
1:07:19
SPEAKER_02: but I will admit I don't necessarily log it or track it as much as maybe I could or should.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_02: But it does appeal to me.
1:07:26
SPEAKER_02: I kind of do like that idea.
1:07:27
SPEAKER_02: And if you had your books organized that way,
1:07:29
SPEAKER_02: it might be,
1:07:30
SPEAKER_02: like you said,
1:07:30
SPEAKER_02: a way to kind of help you track it and log it in a fun way.
1:07:36
SPEAKER_01: You're ready for a topic that people have said we should talk about it,
1:07:39
SPEAKER_01: and we don't disagree,
1:07:42
SPEAKER_01: but we've also been like,
1:07:44
SPEAKER_01: can this handle a whole episode?
1:07:45
SPEAKER_01: It's not the most popular topic from our perspective,
1:07:50
SPEAKER_01: something that we love talking about,
1:07:51
SPEAKER_01: but I think it fits into the shelf control.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_01: I think so.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_01: And we've already touched on it.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_01: Book culling.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_01: From your personal library.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:08:01
SPEAKER_02: And immediately, many of our listeners close out the app.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_02: You know, they're like, I'm done.
1:08:06
SPEAKER_01: We'll return to other things here in just a moment.
1:08:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, stick around.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_01: Bear with us.
1:08:10
SPEAKER_01: Hit fast forward.
1:08:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, maybe just here's a, I don't know, maybe this is extreme, but by Bookish Walker.
1:08:22
SPEAKER_01: Bookish Walker says they organize by author.
1:08:26
SPEAKER_01: But then unless they're signed or absolute keepers like South writing,
1:08:29
SPEAKER_01: Oh,
1:08:30
SPEAKER_01: Caledonia,
1:08:30
SPEAKER_01: Lolly willows,
1:08:31
SPEAKER_01: et cetera.
1:08:32
SPEAKER_01: Every physical book is put on the outpile when we're both finished with it to make room for more books.
1:08:38
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, every book and, and, and to make room for more.
1:08:44
SPEAKER_01: I don't do that.
1:08:46
SPEAKER_01: I know.
1:08:47
SPEAKER_02: I don't either.
1:08:48
SPEAKER_02: But it's the part I can most justify.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_02: And as I've had to kind of learn to be a better caller,
1:08:55
SPEAKER_02: that is the reason for it,
1:08:56
SPEAKER_02: is the idea of you want to continue to have the joy of exploring and buying and all
1:09:01
SPEAKER_02: those things.
1:09:02
SPEAKER_02: And the realities are that that does require, as we start to stack up, some more calling.
1:09:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:09:08
SPEAKER_01: uh-huh this can lead to problems like uh that you you recognized with the with a
1:09:14
SPEAKER_01: tweet from nancy k shapiro you we brought up a part of hers already but do you want
1:09:18
SPEAKER_02: to read what she says i do this yeah she says yeah no you got your heart beating it
1:09:24
SPEAKER_02: did she says about 2500 books all shelved alphabetically for fiction non-fiction
1:09:30
SPEAKER_02: sort of by subject and
1:09:31
SPEAKER_02: I use library thing to manage it.
1:09:33
SPEAKER_02: I do a call every couple of years, but there's less and less I want to let go of.
1:09:38
SPEAKER_02: Books do furnish a one bedroom apartment, which I mentioned earlier.
1:09:41
SPEAKER_02: And I mean,
1:09:42
SPEAKER_02: I really thought that that really resonated with me because the idea of she does
1:09:46
SPEAKER_02: call every few years,
1:09:47
SPEAKER_02: but every year there's less and less that she wants to let go of.
1:09:49
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:09:50
SPEAKER_02: that's the truth of this is I went through a phase when I was younger where I was
1:09:56
SPEAKER_02: buying every book that I was even remotely appealing to me.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_02: And then over time,
1:10:03
SPEAKER_02: you realize,
1:10:03
SPEAKER_02: okay,
1:10:04
SPEAKER_02: maybe I don't need every Jonathan Franzen book or whatever the case may be.
1:10:07
SPEAKER_02: And so you start to cull.
1:10:09
SPEAKER_02: But the realities are over the years, as you continue to cull, what's left over is the creme de la creme.
1:10:15
SPEAKER_02: And so that creme de la creme, the more you read, is going to grow into thousands of books.
1:10:21
SPEAKER_02: And at a certain point, how do you cull some of your very favorites?
1:10:24
SPEAKER_02: I just really like that.
1:10:25
SPEAKER_02: It's an interesting point.
1:10:26
SPEAKER_02: As you get older, at least for me, I can definitely see how that happens where...
1:10:31
SPEAKER_02: You know, even if you're only keeping your favorites, that can really add up to a lot of books.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_01: Though,
1:10:36
SPEAKER_01: admittedly,
1:10:37
SPEAKER_01: a lot of the books that I cull,
1:10:39
SPEAKER_01: some of them are books I've read and I'm like,
1:10:41
SPEAKER_01: okay,
1:10:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't need that anymore.
1:10:42
SPEAKER_01: But a lot of them are books I haven't read.
1:10:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:10:46
SPEAKER_01: You know...
1:10:48
SPEAKER_01: that this is the, one of the other reasons why I call books besides making room for others.
1:10:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, because I don't know if that book's going to be a favorite or not.
1:10:57
SPEAKER_01: So it's,
1:10:59
SPEAKER_01: it,
1:10:59
SPEAKER_01: it's something I've had to kind of realize that for me,
1:11:03
SPEAKER_01: if I keep a whole bunch of books that I intend to read,
1:11:07
SPEAKER_01: it starts to feel a little bit stifling on what I am going to read.
1:11:13
SPEAKER_01: And so I will go through my books sometimes my unread ones because yeah,
1:11:18
SPEAKER_01: I haven't read, and I probably never will read the 3,000 books that are here in this house.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_01: And there will be more that come in in the meantime.
1:11:26
SPEAKER_01: So realistically, many, many, many of these books aren't going to be read by me.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_01: I get that.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_01: That's the way it is.
1:11:36
SPEAKER_01: I hope to read as many of them as I can, and I hope to have the possibilities and all of that.
1:11:39
SPEAKER_01: But
1:11:40
SPEAKER_01: It just isn't possible.
1:11:42
SPEAKER_01: And so I have had to cut books that I would really like to read.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_01: But I look at them and I go,
1:11:48
SPEAKER_01: am I going to read that in the next couple of years,
1:11:50
SPEAKER_01: given all of these other books that I'm going to read?
1:11:53
SPEAKER_01: You know, I might read 100, 150 books a year on a good year.
1:11:58
SPEAKER_01: But if I have 600 or 700 unread books sitting there in a stack,
1:12:02
SPEAKER_01: and all of them ones I would love to prioritize...
1:12:05
SPEAKER_01: I do look at that and say,
1:12:06
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
1:12:07
SPEAKER_01: but which ones of these am I not going to read in the next few years,
1:12:11
SPEAKER_01: realistically?
1:12:12
SPEAKER_01: Because all of the other ones that I'm also probably not going to read over the
1:12:16
SPEAKER_01: next few years,
1:12:17
SPEAKER_01: but that are more realistically.
1:12:20
SPEAKER_01: And I've started to work hard to get rid of those.
1:12:24
SPEAKER_01: And the thing that is amazing is...
1:12:29
SPEAKER_01: I feel a sense of levity when I'm like,
1:12:31
SPEAKER_01: okay,
1:12:31
SPEAKER_01: now I can read some of these books that have been sitting there because there
1:12:35
SPEAKER_01: aren't so many of them,
1:12:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:12:37
SPEAKER_01: yelling at me when I go like little,
1:12:39
SPEAKER_01: little,
1:12:39
SPEAKER_01: little books.
1:12:40
SPEAKER_01: So when I go to pick one, you know, grabbing onto your hands.
1:12:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:12:46
SPEAKER_01: So that's another reason I call is to, is to clear my mind a little bit.
1:12:51
SPEAKER_01: And it, and it does have that effect.
1:12:53
SPEAKER_02: I can see that.
1:12:54
SPEAKER_02: Do you have like a book limbo area, like a bookshelf or an area?
1:12:59
SPEAKER_02: You said you have some stacks on your floor.
1:13:01
SPEAKER_02: Are those all resigned to for sure going out the door?
1:13:04
SPEAKER_02: Because I have a shelf that's kind of like my maybe shelf where like limbo is the
1:13:09
SPEAKER_02: best way I can think of to describe it where I haven't completely decided I'm going
1:13:12
SPEAKER_02: to get rid of them,
1:13:13
SPEAKER_02: but they're ones like,
1:13:14
SPEAKER_02: that I'm thinking if these don't start appealing to me soon, they might go out the door.
1:13:19
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes those are ones where I will do like an audio book just to have experienced the book.
1:13:24
SPEAKER_02: And then I can kind of make room unless it really grabs me.
1:13:27
SPEAKER_02: If it's,
1:13:27
SPEAKER_02: if it's a wonderful book,
1:13:28
SPEAKER_02: maybe I'll put it back into my main shelves,
1:13:31
SPEAKER_02: but otherwise it's going out the door.
1:13:32
SPEAKER_02: Do you have anything like that?
1:13:34
SPEAKER_01: Well,
1:13:35
SPEAKER_01: the intention when I put them on the floor is that they're going out the door,
1:13:38
SPEAKER_01: but sometimes,
1:13:39
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:13:40
SPEAKER_01: because it might be a month or two later that I go to start putting them in a box
1:13:44
SPEAKER_01: to take them somewhere.
1:13:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:46
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, no, a single tear runs down your cheek.
1:13:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:52
SPEAKER_01: So no,
1:13:53
SPEAKER_01: it's not,
1:13:54
SPEAKER_01: it's not really that I put them there with the,
1:13:56
SPEAKER_01: and maybe I'll start doing that,
1:13:58
SPEAKER_01: but where I think,
1:13:59
SPEAKER_01: okay,
1:13:59
SPEAKER_01: this is where it sits for a while.
1:14:01
SPEAKER_01: And I still have a chance to get them.
1:14:03
SPEAKER_01: It's just by, by,
1:14:04
SPEAKER_01: natural occurrence.
1:14:05
SPEAKER_01: That's how it sometimes works out.
1:14:07
SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
1:14:08
SPEAKER_01: there,
1:14:08
SPEAKER_01: there are books that I put down there that I,
1:14:10
SPEAKER_01: I then say,
1:14:11
SPEAKER_01: no,
1:14:11
SPEAKER_01: no,
1:14:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm at a different,
1:14:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm at a different stage of my mind than I was a week ago or two weeks or two
1:14:17
SPEAKER_01: months ago when I put that on the floor to put away.
1:14:20
SPEAKER_02: And that's always the fear, right?
1:14:21
SPEAKER_02: With culling is like,
1:14:22
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:14:23
SPEAKER_02: it probably doesn't happen that often,
1:14:24
SPEAKER_02: but the idea of like in a moment,
1:14:26
SPEAKER_02: in that moment,
1:14:27
SPEAKER_02: you're ready to be done with the book.
1:14:28
SPEAKER_02: And then a week, a month, a year later, it's like,
1:14:31
SPEAKER_02: Oh, no, I can't believe I got rid of that.
1:14:33
SPEAKER_02: And again, to be fair, most of those we could go back and get if we need to.
1:14:36
SPEAKER_02: But I think,
1:14:37
SPEAKER_02: at least for me,
1:14:38
SPEAKER_02: that's one of the things that I always think about when I'm culling is,
1:14:42
SPEAKER_02: what if this is the book I need to read in one year from now?
1:14:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:14:45
SPEAKER_01: And that probably hasn't...
1:14:47
SPEAKER_01: I definitely have that fear,
1:14:49
SPEAKER_01: but it probably hasn't happened quite in that way where I'm like,
1:14:53
SPEAKER_01: oh,
1:14:53
SPEAKER_01: dang,
1:14:54
SPEAKER_01: I got rid of a book that I now just desperately want to read.
1:14:57
SPEAKER_01: Because really and truly, once they're gone...
1:15:01
SPEAKER_01: they come to mind,
1:15:03
SPEAKER_01: but not necessarily in a way that makes them priority over other books that have
1:15:07
SPEAKER_01: come into my life since then.
1:15:09
SPEAKER_01: Other books that are now taking their place in the stacks of unread books that I want to read.
1:15:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, that doesn't happen too often.
1:15:19
SPEAKER_01: Other than sometimes I'll get rid of a collection by an author that I'm like,
1:15:22
SPEAKER_01: I'm probably not going to go back to this one.
1:15:27
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes maybe another book gets translated by that author.
1:15:31
SPEAKER_01: And I think,
1:15:31
SPEAKER_01: oh,
1:15:33
SPEAKER_01: I might would pull the others down and kind of sift through them a little bit while I'm...
1:15:37
SPEAKER_01: you know, reading this new one by them.
1:15:39
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I'd reread it,
1:15:40
SPEAKER_01: but that's,
1:15:41
SPEAKER_01: that's the moment where I get a little bit of a,
1:15:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:15:45
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know they were going to come out with more by that author.
1:15:47
SPEAKER_01: And now I want to see it.
1:15:49
SPEAKER_01: I want to take a picture for Instagram with all.
1:15:55
SPEAKER_02: On the topic of culling,
1:15:56
SPEAKER_02: our good friend Dorian,
1:15:57
SPEAKER_02: who we bring up quite often right now,
1:15:59
SPEAKER_02: is kind of going through that,
1:16:00
SPEAKER_02: I know,
1:16:00
SPEAKER_02: in a fairly public way in the fact that he assured me he has plenty of books left
1:16:05
SPEAKER_02: because I messaged him in a panic like,
1:16:08
SPEAKER_02: don't do it.
1:16:09
SPEAKER_02: Don't care about all your books.
1:16:10
SPEAKER_02: No,
1:16:10
SPEAKER_02: he's been creating an Etsy bookstore where it's five,
1:16:14
SPEAKER_02: six,
1:16:14
SPEAKER_02: ten at a time,
1:16:15
SPEAKER_02: but he's just selling some of his books that he knows he will never get to again.
1:16:20
SPEAKER_02: And I thought it was just an interesting and creative way of kind of going through this where,
1:16:25
SPEAKER_02: And he's sending them out to people who he knows will find some value.
1:16:28
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's something to be said for trading them in at the used bookstore or donating to a library.
1:16:32
SPEAKER_02: But I kind of like this way because in some ways it's almost like a curation or a
1:16:38
SPEAKER_02: way of making sure they're going out into the hands of people who really want them
1:16:41
SPEAKER_02: in value.
1:16:42
SPEAKER_02: I like that way of doing it.
1:16:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like that too.
1:16:45
SPEAKER_01: And I was going to bring that up because we got another,
1:16:48
SPEAKER_01: besides what Dorian's doing,
1:16:51
SPEAKER_01: but we also Poesia y Virtud responded on Twitter,
1:16:57
SPEAKER_01: 20 years into the hobby of buying and reading.
1:17:01
SPEAKER_01: And I'm now trimming it down.
1:17:03
SPEAKER_01: I have around 600 books because every so often I'll sell books I know by now I'll
1:17:08
SPEAKER_01: never read or the ones I've read and didn't like.
1:17:10
SPEAKER_01: And then I like this part.
1:17:11
SPEAKER_01: It's a way of supporting small used bookstores in my city.
1:17:15
SPEAKER_01: I feel books want to be read and loved and those won't get that with me.
1:17:20
SPEAKER_01: And I like this part.
1:17:21
SPEAKER_01: I figure I've sold more or less the same amount I have now.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_01: You know, just a kind of a cycle.
1:17:27
SPEAKER_01: And I do like the idea of culling in order to support,
1:17:31
SPEAKER_01: not to hoard,
1:17:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:17:33
SPEAKER_01: and keep the treasure all to yourself.
1:17:36
SPEAKER_01: If it's going to go to someone else who can appreciate it, great.
1:17:39
SPEAKER_01: And the variety of ways to do that,
1:17:40
SPEAKER_01: whether it's,
1:17:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:17:41
SPEAKER_01: small used bookstores,
1:17:42
SPEAKER_01: libraries,
1:17:44
SPEAKER_01: or with Dorian,
1:17:45
SPEAKER_01: a really kind of special online used bookstore of your own,
1:17:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:17:49
SPEAKER_01: where people can go because they're your books and your curation of titles.
1:17:53
SPEAKER_01: I like that a lot.
1:17:54
SPEAKER_02: I really like that, too.
1:17:55
SPEAKER_02: I was even looking in some of the comment sections below that,
1:17:57
SPEAKER_02: and it was like friends of his who were like,
1:17:59
SPEAKER_02: oh,
1:17:59
SPEAKER_02: I just snatched up that copy of XYZ.
1:18:01
SPEAKER_02: I'm so happy.
1:18:02
SPEAKER_02: And it's really cool to see these books that he's ready to move on from.
1:18:05
SPEAKER_02: And you can see in real time that somebody else is excited and getting value.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_02: So I think that is the thing to remember with a lot of this.
1:18:13
SPEAKER_02: To be fair,
1:18:14
SPEAKER_02: despite my reluctance to call sometimes,
1:18:17
SPEAKER_02: I do have two giant books that we're going to be going up to Boulder tomorrow to
1:18:21
SPEAKER_02: drop off our son at that music camp that I've talked about in the past.
1:18:24
SPEAKER_02: And I will be dropping those off at the Boulder bookstore.
1:18:28
SPEAKER_02: So despite my public stance of reluctance,
1:18:31
SPEAKER_02: which is true,
1:18:32
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:18:32
SPEAKER_02: it's still the realities are that I do it.
1:18:35
SPEAKER_02: And I know what you're saying.
1:18:37
SPEAKER_02: There is some some peace to doing it if you can find the way that works well for you, you know.
1:18:42
SPEAKER_01: Especially if you can convince yourself,
1:18:45
SPEAKER_01: and maybe this is all delusion,
1:18:47
SPEAKER_01: that it is all part of the great life cycle of a book.
1:18:51
SPEAKER_01: And it's got to go live with someone else for a while.
1:18:54
SPEAKER_01: You know, Toy Story.
1:18:56
SPEAKER_01: The Toy Story 2.
1:18:57
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
1:18:59
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
1:19:00
SPEAKER_01: No, it's true.
1:19:02
SPEAKER_01: How does that make you feel, Paul?
1:19:04
SPEAKER_01: That's why you do it.
1:19:05
SPEAKER_01: You do it to...
1:19:07
SPEAKER_01: to pass it on, let someone else get those memories.
1:19:10
SPEAKER_02: If only you could selfishly see their face when they were reading the book and know
1:19:14
SPEAKER_02: that it provided the value.
1:19:15
SPEAKER_02: But I guess we have to just have faith that these books will find their way to the right people.
1:19:19
SPEAKER_01: You have to have faith because if you don't, you probably realize that's not what's going to happen.
1:19:24
SPEAKER_01: And you don't want to see their face when they put it in their own stack of unread books for years.
1:19:29
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:19:31
SPEAKER_01: But it is fun.
1:19:32
SPEAKER_01: I love bookshelves.
1:19:33
SPEAKER_01: I love talking about them.
1:19:34
SPEAKER_01: I love it when people post
1:19:36
SPEAKER_01: bookshelves on online i do you know there's a whole a whole i was gonna say corner
1:19:42
SPEAKER_01: of instagram but it's like more than a corner of of shelf shelfies and and the like
1:19:48
SPEAKER_01: and they're always fun to dig into especially when you know the person and or or or
1:19:53
SPEAKER_01: have gotten to know their tastes or or thoughts over over time absolutely and and
1:19:59
SPEAKER_01: can kind of dig in and zoom in a little bit
1:20:02
SPEAKER_02: Now,
1:20:03
SPEAKER_02: just on that note,
1:20:04
SPEAKER_02: I would encourage anybody who's listening to this who hasn't had a chance,
1:20:07
SPEAKER_02: if you're interested,
1:20:07
SPEAKER_02: you can go look on my social platforms and look back through all these tweets that
1:20:14
SPEAKER_02: we got and these messages on Instagram,
1:20:17
SPEAKER_02: because a lot of them did come with pictures.
1:20:19
SPEAKER_02: So if you do enjoy that, it's a fun time to just browse through those and see some of these
1:20:25
SPEAKER_02: listeners who sent in pictures of all their beautiful bookshelves which thank you
1:20:28
SPEAKER_02: to everyone who sent in comments and pictures i mean it's been so much fun to just
1:20:33
SPEAKER_02: explore and anybody listening now you know we might be able to still share a few
1:20:37
SPEAKER_02: more in future episodes um scatter them in so feel free to send in other comments
1:20:42
SPEAKER_02: and photos and if at the very least we'll enjoy looking at them and interacting
1:20:45
SPEAKER_02: with you and maybe we can share a few in the future
1:20:49
SPEAKER_01: All right, Paul.
1:20:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, this episode is intended to go up the week of June 24th.
1:20:55
SPEAKER_01: So for Patreon and Substack subscribers,
1:21:02
SPEAKER_01: with that level of support,
1:21:04
SPEAKER_01: this will come out on Tuesday,
1:21:05
SPEAKER_01: the 25th of June,
1:21:06
SPEAKER_01: and then for everybody else on the 27th.
1:21:08
SPEAKER_01: That means our next episode is in July.
1:21:11
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
1:21:13
SPEAKER_01: people are going to need to start digging in on the story of Lucy Galt for the
1:21:18
SPEAKER_01: MOOCs and gripes summer book club,
1:21:19
SPEAKER_01: because that episode is going to be posted on August 8th.
1:21:23
SPEAKER_01: And you just don't want to miss out on this.
1:21:26
SPEAKER_01: No, you don't.
1:21:28
SPEAKER_02: No, I agree.
1:21:29
SPEAKER_02: So dig through your shelves.
1:21:30
SPEAKER_02: You know, those of you who are organized, go straight to the, straight to the teas.
1:21:35
SPEAKER_02: And then those of you who are not organized,
1:21:36
SPEAKER_02: you're going to just have to dig through your piles and find your copy.
1:21:40
SPEAKER_02: Cause it's time.
1:21:41
SPEAKER_02: It's time.
1:21:42
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
1:21:43
SPEAKER_01: I have not started reading it yet,
1:21:44
SPEAKER_01: but I have pulled it off and it's sitting there in the stack of 30 or 40 books on
1:21:51
SPEAKER_01: my nightstand.
1:21:52
SPEAKER_01: But because I do,
1:21:54
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:21:54
SPEAKER_01: the books I,
1:21:55
SPEAKER_01: this is where I do organize maybe a little bit better by priority.
1:21:58
SPEAKER_01: It is at the top of that stack.
1:22:00
SPEAKER_01: It's not down there in the middle.
1:22:02
SPEAKER_01: That's where it'll stay until it moves to the, what I'm reading.
1:22:04
SPEAKER_01: And then
1:22:06
SPEAKER_01: gets put back in with my William Trevors, organized by date of publication, the year 2000s.
1:22:11
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
1:22:14
SPEAKER_02: Trevor, it will shock you to hear this, but we are kindred spirits.
1:22:17
SPEAKER_02: Mine is sitting on my teetering bedside table, but it's at the very top.
1:22:21
SPEAKER_02: Nice, nice.
1:22:25
SPEAKER_01: To see which one of us is going to pull it off first and get through it.
1:22:30
SPEAKER_02: And hope there's not a book of Lance in the process.
1:22:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, be careful.
1:22:34
SPEAKER_01: Be careful with that.
1:22:36
SPEAKER_01: Final message, the obligatory regulation safety message.
1:22:41
SPEAKER_01: Folks, be careful with your shelves, reshelving, organizing.
1:22:44
SPEAKER_01: Don't go with these book stacks.
1:22:47
SPEAKER_02: Wear a hard hat if you need to.
1:22:48
SPEAKER_02: It might be posted.
1:22:50
SPEAKER_01: Unless you're like Brad Bigelow and it's become an art of teetering stacks and
1:22:55
SPEAKER_01: you've managed to keep these things balanced perfectly because of years and years
1:23:00
SPEAKER_01: of practice.
1:23:00
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
1:23:01
SPEAKER_02: It's like those rocks you see on hiking trails.
1:23:03
SPEAKER_02: It's a thing of beauty in and of itself.
1:23:07
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:23:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, listeners, we'll be back here in a couple of weeks.
1:23:10
SPEAKER_01: I actually don't have what episode we're going to do written down or I would
1:23:13
SPEAKER_01: announce it,
1:23:14
SPEAKER_01: but we'll keep on working on soliciting listener feedback.
1:23:17
SPEAKER_01: It's been a blast to share so many thoughts and it's opened up our minds to so many
1:23:23
SPEAKER_01: other topics and things to,
1:23:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:23:25
SPEAKER_01: ways to go with these topics.
1:23:26
SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much.
1:23:28
SPEAKER_01: It's so much fun.
1:23:29
SPEAKER_01: I know we couldn't share everybody's.
1:23:31
SPEAKER_01: that's probably how it's always going to be because we do get quite a few,
1:23:36
SPEAKER_01: but you know,
1:23:38
SPEAKER_01: we hope that you'll continue to share,
1:23:39
SPEAKER_01: even if it,
1:23:40
SPEAKER_01: even if it isn't something that gets,
1:23:42
SPEAKER_01: gets shared on the podcast,
1:23:44
SPEAKER_01: we benefit from it.
1:23:45
SPEAKER_02: And we read everyone and appreciate everyone.
1:23:48
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, just echoing that.
1:23:49
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
1:23:49
SPEAKER_02: It's been a blast to hear from everybody for this episode and just in general.
1:23:53
SPEAKER_01: All right, Paul.
1:23:56
SPEAKER_01: Well,
1:23:57
SPEAKER_01: Go and enjoy your day of reading.
1:23:58
SPEAKER_01: Are you going to stick with the book of essays or is that going to be a periodic
1:24:04
SPEAKER_01: thing where you read an essay or two?
1:24:06
SPEAKER_02: I was just debating that.
1:24:07
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to burn through them.
1:24:09
SPEAKER_02: I could easily read it all in one or two sittings because I love her writing so much,
1:24:12
SPEAKER_02: but I do want to kind of spread it out.
1:24:14
SPEAKER_02: I have that one and I have Miss Macintosh that are both ones to dip in and out of.
1:24:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, which you also don't want to just burn right through in one or two sittings.
1:24:21
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
1:24:21
SPEAKER_02: I have to hold myself back or else I'd just read all 1300 pages in one sitting.
1:24:26
SPEAKER_02: No, I was just thinking, again, we talk about this a lot.
1:24:29
SPEAKER_02: I think I do need one more book that's kind of,
1:24:32
SPEAKER_02: since both of those are ones to dip in and out of,
1:24:33
SPEAKER_02: but I don't know what it's going to be yet.
1:24:35
SPEAKER_02: So that's TBD.
1:24:36
SPEAKER_02: How about you?
1:24:37
SPEAKER_02: What is your reading plan for the day?
1:24:39
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I wrote down a list of all the books I'm in the middle of.
1:24:43
SPEAKER_01: And there are a lot of them,
1:24:45
SPEAKER_01: but the,
1:24:46
SPEAKER_01: because I finished Silas Marner for my book group and we still have a couple more
1:24:50
SPEAKER_01: weeks of reading that,
1:24:51
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:24:52
SPEAKER_01: I just burned right through it.
1:24:53
SPEAKER_01: I'm reading scenes of clerical life or Elliot's first kind of collection of short
1:24:58
SPEAKER_01: stories or more like novellas,
1:25:00
SPEAKER_01: but that wasn't part of our reading group.
1:25:02
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, I'll use this little gap to go back and read at least one of those.
1:25:05
SPEAKER_01: And maybe, maybe the next gap I'll do it because we're, we're a few weeks away from starting Ramola.
1:25:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:25:12
SPEAKER_01: one of her books that I know absolutely nothing about that's a big one right all of
1:25:18
SPEAKER_01: them that are left are pretty big yeah yeah I thought so I have that one too four I
1:25:22
SPEAKER_01: think we have Ramola and then Felix Holt and then Middlemarch
1:25:26
SPEAKER_01: which I've read and loved.
1:25:27
SPEAKER_01: So we'll, you know, that'll be fun.
1:25:29
SPEAKER_01: An excellent reread.
1:25:30
SPEAKER_01: And then end with Daniel Deronda,
1:25:33
SPEAKER_01: which,
1:25:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:25:34
SPEAKER_01: and honestly,
1:25:34
SPEAKER_01: none of them other than middle March,
1:25:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:25:37
SPEAKER_01: cause I read it.
1:25:37
SPEAKER_01: Do I, do I really know anything about him?
1:25:39
SPEAKER_01: These aren't,
1:25:40
SPEAKER_01: these aren't books that get,
1:25:42
SPEAKER_01: it's not like Dickens books or treasure Island,
1:25:44
SPEAKER_01: where even if you've never read it,
1:25:45
SPEAKER_01: you have some maybe incorrect,
1:25:48
SPEAKER_01: but some idea of what it is.
1:25:49
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea what these books are about.
1:25:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know.
1:25:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited about it.
1:25:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
1:25:55
SPEAKER_02: I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about that because I have several of
1:25:58
SPEAKER_02: those and that might be enough to push me into jumping into some of those.
1:26:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:26:01
SPEAKER_02: Have you read Silas Marner?
1:26:03
SPEAKER_02: I have.
1:26:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:26:04
SPEAKER_01: I loved that.
1:26:05
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
1:26:06
SPEAKER_01: I absolutely loved it.
1:26:07
SPEAKER_01: And just to put in a little plug here,
1:26:10
SPEAKER_01: our good friend Rowan Mateson,
1:26:12
SPEAKER_01: who joined us last year for our Victorian literature episode,
1:26:16
SPEAKER_01: has a couple of fantastic books of essays on Eliot.
1:26:20
SPEAKER_01: One is focused on Middlemarch for book groups.
1:26:23
SPEAKER_01: I haven't dipped into that one too much yet because we're not to that book yet.
1:26:29
SPEAKER_01: But the other one is a collection of essays about not every one of her books, but most of her books.
1:26:35
SPEAKER_01: Like I read the one for The Mill on the Floss.
1:26:39
SPEAKER_01: which is just fantastic and about the ending,
1:26:42
SPEAKER_01: which is...
1:26:42
SPEAKER_01: And she writes about it without spoiling it,
1:26:45
SPEAKER_01: but writes about it in a way that is so eye-opening and just really,
1:26:49
SPEAKER_01: really wonderful.
1:26:51
SPEAKER_01: And then this one on Silas Marner and atheism for believers, I think is what she calls it.
1:26:58
SPEAKER_01: And it is just, again, so well done.
1:27:01
SPEAKER_01: Rowan, your essay's just...
1:27:04
SPEAKER_01: Part of the joy of reading these books has also been going and reading your thoughts on them afterwards.
1:27:11
SPEAKER_01: That's good to hear.
1:27:12
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know about that.
1:27:13
SPEAKER_01: It's definitely enhancing my George Eliot experience.
1:27:16
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
1:27:16
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know about that, but I'm going to have to go look those up right after this episode.
1:27:20
SPEAKER_02: That sounds amazing.
1:27:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:27:22
SPEAKER_01: I think the next one's something like macaroni and cheese and something about Ramona.
1:27:26
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know what that's where that's going.
1:27:29
SPEAKER_01: Again, nothing about these these next few books.
1:27:32
SPEAKER_01: Do I really do I really have any idea?
1:27:34
SPEAKER_01: But but again, I'm very excited.
1:27:36
SPEAKER_01: Very excited.
1:27:37
SPEAKER_01: It's about macaroni and cheese.
1:27:38
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
1:27:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's a historical novel.
1:27:41
SPEAKER_01: Like,
1:27:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:27:42
SPEAKER_01: to be fair,
1:27:43
SPEAKER_01: even Middlemarch is,
1:27:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:27:44
SPEAKER_01: historical in a way because she wrote it decades after the events and Adam Bede is
1:27:49
SPEAKER_01: historical and Silas Marner is historical.
1:27:51
SPEAKER_01: But this one goes back, I think, a little further into Italy.
1:27:56
SPEAKER_01: That's what I've gathered from my very little looking ahead.
1:28:00
SPEAKER_01: and stuff i did not know um a few weeks ago so again going into this one really
1:28:07
SPEAKER_01: really blind but anxious to to see what it's about yeah well whichever one you dive
1:28:12
SPEAKER_02: into today it sounds like it will start start with the the earlier collection but i
1:28:16
SPEAKER_01: hope you have a great day of reading sounds good i hope i do too you know there are
1:28:21
SPEAKER_01: a lot of things to to be done but yeah if not though you could always get lost in
1:28:25
SPEAKER_02: your shelves
1:28:27
SPEAKER_01: There we go.
1:28:27
SPEAKER_01: I do have that on my to-do list, don't I?
1:28:29
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
1:28:30
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:28:32
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, everybody.
1:28:32
SPEAKER_01: We'll be back in a couple of weeks.
1:28:34
SPEAKER_02: Bye.
1:28:36
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to this episode of the MOOCs and the Gripes podcast.
1:28:40
SPEAKER_02: You can follow the MOOCs and the Gripes and get show notes and book and film
1:28:43
SPEAKER_02: reviews at moocsandgripes.com.
1:28:46
SPEAKER_02: On Twitter, you can find Trevor at MOOCs and Paul at Bibliopal.
1:28:50
SPEAKER_02: You can also get information about future shows on our Patreon.
1:28:54
SPEAKER_02: If you'd like to donate to the show,
1:28:56
SPEAKER_02: anything and everything,
1:28:57
SPEAKER_02: even a dollar a month,
1:28:58
SPEAKER_02: helps and is deeply appreciated.
1:29:00
SPEAKER_02: You can become a patron at patreon.com slash mooks.
1:29:05
SPEAKER_02: Until next time.