Reorganization

This one goes here. This one goes there.

Like an extra from High Fidelity, I try to keep my books organized in a logical way. So I can find them. So others can quickly assess our library at a glance. So everything fits somewhere.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve let the bookshelves go wild, combining shelves and stacking and shoving and mixing. Sierra has helped it along with her own strategic rearrangements. Suddenly, it’s as if entropy had come alive.

This lack of order bothers me. And I need to fix it.

So now, with Sierra asleep and a fervent desire to bring a little semblance of order back to my life, I’m staring at my books, wondering the best path to take.

Continue by subject alone? Or alphabetize within the subject? Or simply alphabetize all of it?

I’ve even toyed with going all Dewey Decimal System on this bookshelf’s ass.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I find comforting peace. That I lose myself in dusting and reorganizing and – even more – remembering. Rediscovering my favorites. Making amends with my “to read” pile. And giving in to the act of organization, remembering back to my days as a bookstore rat; to the smell of old pages and the feel of broken spines.

This one goes there. This one, on the end. This one…