How do you arrange your books? Myself i like alphabetical - my mother did it by subject and some ppl i know its just random

Spot

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I usually arrange them back onto other people's bookshelves like at Book Stores for a re-sell of a few dollars or back to Libraries. I don't keep many books.

by subject.

I divide them into fiction and non-fiction.

Nom de Plume wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2020 at 10:33am:

I divide them into fiction and non-fiction.

Yeah i do divide fiction from non-fiction but then alphabetical

Spot

History, medical, novels, miscellaneous.

Very anarchic.  Have a shelf for Australian history and everything else, fiction and non fiction all together to fill the space, although I do keep book series in order-mostly.

Sir Spot of Borg wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2020 at 10:45am:

Nom de Plume wrote on Dec 3rd, 2020 at 10:33am: I divide them into fiction and non-fiction. Yeah i do divide fiction from non-fiction but then alphabetical Spot

Obviously I too do more that...
For non-fiction, I divide it into subject matter and I keep related subjects next to each other.
For fiction, I divide it into classical, contemporary and sci-fi. 
I keep books yet to be read in the draw in the coffee table... away from prying eyes, so I can read it first.

In my family, we borrow each others books...
I make them sign out the books on a ledger because I am a precious princess who doesn't trust her family... so they say.  ::) ::) ::)

Having worked as a librarian for some years in my youth I adhere strictly to Mr Dewey’s system. With me it’s almost automatic. Visitors, family members etc know not to remove any books without asking me first. Lord help them if I discover them returning them to the wrong part of the collection.
How I wish the entire internet was somehow classified in a similar manner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification

Oh, and I NEVER lend books. If I learn someone really needs a tome from my library I buy them a copy. (unless it’s something rare and very expensive)

Nom de Plume wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2020 at 12:22pm:

Sir Spot of Borg wrote on Dec 3rd, 2020 at 10:45am: Nom de Plume wrote on Dec 3rd, 2020 at 10:33am: I divide them into fiction and non-fiction. Yeah i do divide fiction from non-fiction but then alphabetical Spot Obviously I too do more that... For non-fiction, I divide it into subject matter and I keep related subjects next to each other. For fiction, I divide it into classical, contemporary and sci-fi.  I keep books yet to be read in the draw in the coffee table... away from prying eyes, so I can read it first. In my family, we borrow each others books... I make them sign out the books on a ledger because I am a precious princess who doesn't trust her family... so they say.  ::) ::) ::)

;D

Doing a clean up of my house and I have found that I have twice as many books that can't be stacked in the bookshelf than I thought. I will have to do the stacking of books into the drawers again.

UnSubRocky wrote on Dec 10^th, 2020 at 10:50pm:

Doing a clean up of my house and I have found that I have twice as many books that can't be stacked in the bookshelf than I thought. I will have to do the stacking of books into the drawers again.

Or get more bookshelves - maybe ask santa

Spot

Sir Spot of Borg wrote on Dec 11^th, 2020 at 4:49am:

UnSubRocky wrote on Dec 10th, 2020 at 10:50pm: Doing a clean up of my house and I have found that I have twice as many books that can't be stacked in the bookshelf than I thought. I will have to do the stacking of books into the drawers again. Or get more bookshelves - maybe ask santa

When I get my house organised, I should be able to find room to get another bookshelf. But those bookshelves are not cheap.

Bookshelves are kinda old fashioned. Buying eBooks (e.g. Kindle on Amazon) means you can buy hundreds more virtual books than real books!

Kindle books are WAY cheap! And no need for bookshelves!

I would not be a convert but>:

1. Kindle books are cheap!

2. Kindle books are easy to take on a camping trip—no extra weight!

3. No bookshelves needed!

I got roped into a Folio Society book-buying club back in the day. I was required to buy a certain amount before I was not longer obligated. But it was okay for me as the books were what I wanted. However, they sent me a booklet on other books I could buy in the future. I did not wish to purchase any more. However, I have discovered that the books I found in the 2009 booklets I could read for free in pdf form online.

I arrange them on shelves by subject in categories....cookery, medical/health, spiritual, art and craft, biographies.

Then I do the heights to match, with little books on top of the taller books.

Jovial Monk wrote on Dec 17^th, 2020 at 5:18pm:

Bookshelves are kinda old fashioned. Buying eBooks (e.g. Kindle on Amazon) means you can buy hundreds more virtual books than real books! Kindle books are WAY cheap! And no need for bookshelves! I would not be a convert but>: 1. Kindle books are cheap! 2. Kindle books are easy to take on a camping trip—no extra weight! 3. No bookshelves needed!

Maybe cheap but looking at a tiny screen for hours not good

Spot

Sir Spot of Borg wrote on Feb 1^st, 2021 at 10:59am:

Jovial Monk wrote on Dec 17th, 2020 at 5:18pm: Bookshelves are kinda old fashioned. Buying eBooks (e.g. Kindle on Amazon) means you can buy hundreds more virtual books than real books! Kindle books are WAY cheap! And no need for bookshelves! I would not be a convert but>: 1. Kindle books are cheap! 2. Kindle books are easy to take on a camping trip—no extra weight! 3. No bookshelves needed! Maybe cheap but looking at a tiny screen for hours not good Spot

I discovered something ... speechify... although it’s costs about $8 month (not sure if it’s us or au)
I find reading sends me to sleep.
So this speechify, you take photos with your phone of each page.
Then you plug in your earphones and it reads it to you!
You can choose any voice you like, any language, and you can even set the speed you prefer.
I’m just searching to see what else that’s similar is out there to compare pricing etc

I tried e-books... but the voices are set at whomever is reading it whether you like their voice or not.

Something like speechify I find suitable, as I have many books already. To just go along with housework, or walking around shops and have a book read out to me sounds great!

So.... has anyone checked it out yet? Speechify or something similar that may be cheaper or free?

no not me. i like to read words on a page. Cant concentrate on audio.

Spot

I arrange them by subject. I quite like ebooks, but I have many high quality editions of real books that may never find their way into digital. And anyway, the illustrations would look like crap on a kindle.

issuevoter wrote on Feb 10^th, 2021 at 4:42pm:

I arrange them by subject. I quite like ebooks, but I have many high quality editions of real books that may never find their way into digital. And anyway, the illustrations would look like crap on a kindle.

;D ;D Aren't they called "magazines"?  ;D ;D You can see that on the Internetz these days.  ;)

Bookshelves accompany me all my life.

I usually put the tallest and thickest books on the shelf (from left to right) first, and then the smallest and thinnest books.

And of course I try to have books on one subject on each shelf.

I read my Kindle books on my 21" monitor. Easy to read, also way cheaper than buying paper versions.

I just search for free pdf based books online. Way cheaper than kindle.

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Jeffrey Epstein, litterateur
On his reading and its uses
The Drift
Feb 13, 2026

Alongside his other hobbies, Jeffrey Epstein read for fun. The latest batch of his emails, released on January 30 by the Justice Department, display the syntax of a liberal arts undergrad who has taken too much Adderall, but document his taste thoroughly. We already knew about Epstein’s appreciation of Nabokov and Lolita; his correspondence reveals myriad men and women trying to ingratiate themselves through their readings of the Russian master (including journalist Edward Jay Epstein, Yale computer scientist David Gelernter, Princeton biologist Corina Tarnita, and then-Harvard English professor Elisa New). Epstein also enjoyed French literature: he admired Proust and Jean-Paul Sartre, recommended Anne Desclos’s Sodom novel Story of O, and wrote enthusiastically about Simone de Beauvoir, whom he described as Sartre’s brilliant “girlfriend,” spelling her name both “simone de beauoirs” and “simone de bauvoi.” Writing to the Crown Princess of Norway, Epstein dismissed Gavin Bowd’s translation of Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island as “awful.”


Within the English-language tradition, Epstein might have read Joyce’s Ulysses — he and mathematician David Berlinski seem to have debated the relative merits of Joyce and Nabokov in Paris over dinner. In one message, Epstein borrows the title of the Irish novel to refer to a complicated accounting scheme that is harder to follow than “Oxen of the Sun.” But then again, maybe he just watched the movie (the subject line of an email informing him of a “Ulysses” delivery is “DVDs”). He received verses from T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding” from Deepak Chopra and, in an unexpectedly sincere exchange, a redacted sender with characteristically Epsteinian punctuation quoted Yeats to an unknown addressee: “When you are old and gray;How many loved your moments of glad grace And loved your beauty with love false or true,But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you…….”

Epstein understood that these highbrow references would aid him in his quest to establish himself in elite circles, perhaps one of the last domains in which literature still confers prestige. It is tempting to try to decode what else his selections might reveal: did he esteem Borges (“great,, literature,, poems,, impossible translations”) because “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” and its world conspiracy of intellectuals spoke to him? Or was it Borges’s interest in pop philosophy and science that Epstein was keen to?

Like so much else in his life, Epstein’s literary exploration was typically subordinated to his relentless network-building. He was given a translation of Clarice Lispector by Noam Chomsky’s Brazilian wife, recommended Thomas Bernhard’s The Woodcutters; and bought V.S. Naipaul’s Collected Short Fiction on Amazon a day after Berlinski mentioned him. One of his main literary correspondents seems to have been the publicist Peggy Siegal, who once invited him to a dinner with Jonathan Franzen and Salman Rushdie and tried to get Nora Ephron and Philip Roth to attend another.

One of the few personal interests that comes across in the files is Jewish history and identity. Epstein recommended Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint to former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler as well as Leon Uris’s anti-Palestinian propagandistic epic The Haj. Woody Allen’s almost-stepdaughter-turned-wife Soon-Yi Previn thanked Epstein profusely after her daughter signed up for a Bard seminar on Isaac Babel and the Russian Revolution. He mentioned the Bible frequently in his correspondence with Chopra, Chomsky, and Ghislaine Maxwell, who urged him to take scripture classes with her (“What should you do?” Ghislaine wrote, “Miss me... Then there is always that Talmud meeting I think I mentioned once before”).

Epstein did seem to feel that all of his reading gave him a more profound and insightful spirit. Much has been said about literature’s capacity to improve our moral sensibilities, but Epstein seems to point, on the contrary, to literature’s ability to corrupt us or justify our corruption. Identifying himself with the Bard, he once wrote: “I understand, shakespeare understood, competing loyalties.. follow you highest principle. truth, really, and do it sooner rather than later. it will not endear you, but will garner respect.” In the end, he was less of a King Henry and more of an Iago