January 29, 2012 by lizzysiddal
No prizes for guessing how my hours will be spent this Sunday ….. Should I stack them colour-coded, by interest, alphabetical? Decisions, decisions … what a lovely dilemma.
New shelves should have new books, shouldn’t they? Have lots of vouchers actually … Does trading them in count as breaking a book-buying ban? It does? So be it ….
Imperium - Christian Kracht
The Infatuations - Javier Marías
My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout
Summerhouse, Later - Judith Hermann
Mona Lisa - Alexander Lernet-Holenia
I Was Jack Mortimer - Alexander Lernet-Holenia
So You've Been Publicly Shamed - Jon Ronson
I Am No One - Patrick Flanery
I Called Him Necktie - Milena Michiko Flašar
Summer Before The Dark - Volker Weidermann
The Weight of Things - Marianne Fritz
When the Professor Who Got Stuck in the Snow - Dan Rhodes
Who Is Martha? - Marjana Gaponenko
A Whole Life - Robert Seethaler
Vienna Tales
Passenger 23
The Gap of Time - Jeanette Winterson
Coffin Road - Peter May
The Book of St Andrews
Pure - Andrew Miller
The Man in the High Castle - Philipp K Dick
A Doppelganger with Aquis Submersus - Theodor Storm
Confusion - Stefan Zweig
Late Fame - Arthur Schnitzler
We Are Doing Fine - Arno Geiger
Fly Away, Pigeon - Melinda Nadj Abonji
Erebos - Ursula Poznanski
Flood of Fire - Amitav Ghosh
The Rain Maiden and Other Fairy Tales - Theodor Storm
This Brave Balance - Ruselka Reh
The Secret of The Water Knight - Ruselka Reh
August - Christa Wolf
They divided the Sky - Christa Wolf
Wallenstein - Friedrich von Schiller
Schillers Frauen - Joseph Kiemeier-Debre
Schillers Bitt- und Bettelbriefe - ed. Christiana Engelmann
The Robbers - Friedrich von Schiller
Playthings - Alex Pheby
The Last Bear - Mandy Haggith
The New Sorrows of Young W - Ulrich Plenzdorf
Red: The Natural History of The Redhead - Jackie Colliss Harvey
The Fishermen - Chigozie Obioma
Faust - A Tragedy in Two Parts - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Thing About Prague - Rachel Weiss
The Emperor of Ice-Cream - Dan Gunn
The Chimes - Anna Smail
Lila - Marilynne Robinson
Whispering Shadows - Jan Philipp Sendker
The Vegetarian - Han Kang
The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin - Georges Simenon
On Glasgow and Edinburgh - Robert Crawford
Jellyfish - Janice Galloway
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
While The Women are Sleeping - Javier Marias
The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare
Alice In Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh
Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh
The Hottest Dishes of The Tartar Cuisine - Alina Bronsky
Delirium - Laura Restrepo
The Dark Heart of the Night - Leonora Miano
101 Detectives - Ivan Vladislavic
Don't Try This at Home - Angela Readman
June - Gerbrand Bakker
The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark
Crime Fiction - A Very Short Introduction - Richard Bradford
Viper Wine - Hermione Eyre
The Girl on The Train - Paula Hawkins
Goetheglut - Bernd Köstering
Wallenstein - Friedrich Schiller
Silence - Mechthild Bormann
In the Beginning was the Sea -Thomas Gonzalez
Munich Airport - Greg Baxter
The Ludwig Conspiracy - Oliver Pötzsch
Rise - Karen Campbell
Will & Tom - Matthew Plampin
The Blue Horse - Philip Miller
The Lie - Helen Dunmore
Crime Novel - Petri Tamminen
The Brotherhood of Book Hunters - Raphael Jerusalmy
A Tabby Cat's Tale - Han Dong 
Family Heirlooms - Zulmira Ribeiro Tavares 
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
The Table of Less Valued Knights - Marie Phillips 
The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tey 
Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen 
Glass - Alex Christoffi 
Look Who's Back - Timur Vermes 
Crazy Tales of Blood and Guts - Teresa Solana 
The Miniaturist - Jesse Burton 
The Temporary Gentleman - Sebastian Barry 
The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro 
Under The Tripoli Sky - Kamal Ben Hamada
The Blue Room - Hanne Orstavik 
The Dead Lake - Hamid Ismailov
The Caucasian Chalk Circle - Bertolt Brecht
Greenbanks - Dorothy Whipple 
Whisky Galore - Compton MacKenzie
The Collini Case - Ferdinand von Schirach (2013)
The Girl Who Wasn't There - Ferdinand von Schirach (2015)
Love, Revenge and Buttered Scones - Bobbie Darbyshire (2010)
Losing It! - Helen Lederer (2015)
A Time of Gifts -Patrick Leigh Fermor (1977)
Mr Darwin's Gardener - Kristina Carlson (2013)
Dept of Speculation - Jenny Offill (2014)
The Pierced Heart - Lynn Shepherd (2014)
Runaway - Peter May (2015)
Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage - Haruki Murakami (2014)
Eyrie - Tim Winton (2014)
Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata (1956)
This Is Where I Am - Karen Campbell (2013)
The Battle of the Books - Jonathan Swift (1704)
The Sound of Things Falling - Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Mr Mac and Me - Esther Freud
The Monogram Murders - Sophie Hannah
Germany: Memories of A Nation - Neil McGregor
The Death of Lomond Friel - Sue Peebles
The Unknown Unknown - Mark Forsyth
The Bookshop Strikes Back - Ann Patchett
The Leipzig Affair - Fiona Rintoul
A Child's Garden of Verses - R L Stevenson
F - Daniel Kehlmann
The End of Days - Jenny Erpenbeck
The Essential Rilke
Pure Contradiction - Rainer Maria Rilke
Just call me Superhero - Alina Bronsky
The Dark Meadow - Andrea Maria Schenkel
West - Julia Franck
The Tower - Uwe Tellkamp
Going to the Dogs - Erich Kästner
The Flying Classroom - Erich Kästner
Picture Her Dead - Lin Anderson
Stone Mattress - Margaret Atwood (2014)
The Shock of the Fall - Nathan Filer
The Case of The Black Pearl - Lin Anderson
Big Bad Wolf - Nele Neuhaus
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay - Elena Ferrante
The Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons - Monica Cantieni
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Berlin Triptych - David Wagner
City of Rumor -Gideon Lewis-Kraus
Berlin: Imagine a City - Rory McLean
Picnic of The Virtues - Felicitas Hoppe
Goetheruh - Bernd Köstering
Fest - Mark McCrum
The Siege - Arturo Perez-Reverte
The Spring of Kasper Meier - Ben Fergusson
Little Man, What Now? - Hans Fallada
Summer House With Swimming Pool - Herman Koch
Look Up Glasgow (Pocket edition) - Adrian Seale (2014)
Bhalla Strand - Sarah Maine (2014)
Death in Pont-Aven - Jean Luc-Bannalec (2014)
These Islands We Sing - An Anthology of Scottish Island Poetry (2012)
The Girl On the Ferry Boat - Angus Peter Campbell (2013)
Virginia Woolf in Manhattan - Maggie Gee (2014)
Absolution - Patrick Flanery (2012)
The Grand Banks Café - Georges Simenon (1931/2014)
A Crime in Holland - Georges Simenon (1931/2014)
A Night at the Crossroads - Georges Simenon (1931/2014)
Cairo - Chris Womersley (2014)
Robert The Bruce, King of Scots - James Robertson and Jill Calder (2014)
Decompression - Juli Zeh (2012/2014)
I Murdered My Library - Linda Grant (2014)
Death By The Book - Lenny Bartulin (2008)
Dog Will Have His Day - Fred Vargas (1996/2014)
Longbourn- Jo Baker (2013)
An Officer and A Spy - Robert Harris (2013)
The Story of A New Name - Elena Ferrante (2012/2013)
The Yellow Dog - Georges Simenon (1931/2014)
The Carter of La Providence - Georges Simenon (1931/2014)
The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien - Georges Simenon (1931/2014)
Fair Helen - Andrew Greig (2013)
Strange Weather in Tokyo - Hiromi Kawakami (2012/2013)
Northamger Abbey - Val McDiarmid (2014)
On Glasgow and Edinburgh - Robert Crawford (2013)
All The Rage - A L Kennedy (2014)
Cold Winter In Bordeaux - Allan Massie (2014)
The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra - Pedro Mairal (2013/2013)
Unfashioned Creatures - Lesley MacDowell (2013)
Reasons She Goes to the Woods - Deborah Kay Davies (2014)
The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri (2013)
The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey (2012)
The Boat - Nam Le (2009)
The Mussel Feast - Birgit Vanderbeke (1990/2013)
Schottenfreude - Ben Schott (2013)
Schroder - Amity Gaige (2013)
Sense and Sensibility - Joanna Trollope (2013)
The Pendragon Legend - Antal Szerb (1934/2006)
The Bug - Ellen Ullman (2002)
Close to the Machine - Ellen Ullman (1996)
Mesmerized- Alissa Walser (2010/2012)
The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion (2013)
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (1989)
My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante (2012/2012)
Léon and Louise - Alex Capus (2011/2012)
Revenge - Yoko Ogawa (1998/2013)
Entry Island - Peter May (2013)
The Diving Pool - Yoko Ogawa (1990/91/2009)
An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful - J David Simons (2013)
The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton (2013)
Empty bookshelves.
I envy muchly…
They’d only go to waste if you didn’t use them, wouldn’t they & waste is not good is it, in fact it’s bad on moral & environmental grounds…….
I’ll let you finish this argument, but this should start you in the right direction.
I’m LOVING the look of your new bookshelves Lizzy, and I’m quite envious that are getting to spend a few happy hours filling them. I’d tell you to have loads of fun, but I know you’re going to anyway.
Actually, reading this has got me thinking about how I order my own library. Fact is, my bookshelves have no order whatsoever. I don’t arrange them alphabetically, and I certainly don’t display them according to colour. At the very least my books are loosely sorted by theme, but the arrangement is more unique and customised than anything else, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
You see, I believe that one’s library layout is as personal a thing as the books that one chooses to add to it, and one should have a library layout that’s as unique as the individual who creates it. For instance, the books that inspire me the most are the ones which i have within reach around the desk where I spend most of my time reading and writing. There’s the obvious reference books – dictionaries, and books on craft, grammar, punctuation etc., but brushing covers with these are those which are the most precious to me e.g. my Steinbeck’s, my Wolff’s, my Van Booy’s, my Joseph Mitchell’s, my Paris Review Interviews, my New York City reference books, and, the letter collections of writers such as Steinbeck, Chekhov, Hamsun and D. H. Lawrence. Having these books so close to me, inspires me daily.
In other rooms I’m perhaps even more ‘random’, because I tend to just slot books on shelves wherever they may fit. I may organise books by authors in these areas, but they’re certainly not alphabetically arranged, and Murakami for instance, lives quite comfortably next to Proust, whereas Hemingway’s constant companion is Shusaku Endo.
I talk of ‘loosely sorting my books by theme’, but there is one literary form that I’m almost religious about, when it comes to arrangement. I have a single bookcase in my study where nothing else but short story collections/anthologies live. As you probably know I worship the form as though it were a religion, and this bookshelf stands as a shrine to all things short fiction. A warm smile comes across my face, every time I look towards it.
Warmest
Rob x
Buying books with vouchers isn’t breaking the book buying ban. At least not the way I see it. I organize books by genre and then subgenre. Literary fiction by countries and the countries by time periods … No color code for me.
*drool*
Progress report:
This shelf-stacking is hard work. Having put in a 6-hour shift arranging by collection, I decided I didn’t like the look. ;(
And I don’t know whether Daphne du Maurier belongs in d or M.
I shall sleep on it ….
I go strictly A-Z with non-fiction & biographies separated from fiction and I put Du Maurier in D if that helps!
Two days in and all I’m saving is that I don’t have enough shelves! Going back to IKEA for more tomorrow …. Thank goodness, I took a week off work to organse this ….
As for the filing system, it will definitely be idiosyncratic or to use Rob’s more kindly phrase, unique! Du Maurier paperbacks in D, hardbacks in M, for example. Hmmm …..