Sorting Books

We have a bunch of books at home. Every now and then, when we feel settled in, we think about getting them organized – so that the books are easy to find. Three things keep me from doing it:

1. Our collection is small enough, about 3,000 books, that once I scan the shelves I can generally remember where everything is
2. We move so often that we would be constantly reorganizing
3. Like all happily married couples with books, we have never been able to agree on how to sort and organize our books (see the first essay in Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader).

We have collected and discussed various options for organizing and sorting: by author, by subject or topic, by title, using the Dewey system, etc. Babar told us he had his books organized for him by color, and then sorted by size.

Last night Natasha showed me the most novel way to organize. Here’s how I learnt it:
Me: Why is there a pile of books under your bed?
Natasha: Those are my princess books. I was sorting them.
Me: But why didn’t you put them back on the shelf?
Natasha: I sorted them by prettiness – the prettiest book is on top and the least pretty one is at the bottom.
Me: That’s a fun way to sort them. But why don’t you put them back in the bookshelf?
Natasha: Well, I don’t know if the prettiest book should be on the left or the right side.

She eventually put the books back on the shelf, with “the prettiest ones on the left, and the next prettiest ones on the right, and the least pretty ones in the middle.” She also let me in on how a book’s prettiness is measured – how pretty she thinks the princess on the cover is. It makes me wonder if Gravitation is prettier or The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time.