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samantham:

reluctantukresident:

samantham:

sciencevsromance:

NYT is all over the “arrange your books by color” trend.

I feel very strongly that this trend is mostly for people who do not actually read their books.

Everyone I know who does this does actually read their books.  We also all have at least mild OCD and are the types that keep our houses neat at all times, organize our clothes by color, organize our spices alphabetically, organize organize organize, etc…

Oh, good, then you can explain to me the main thing that baffles me about this, which is: how do you find your books when you need them again? Organizing makes sense, because it makes things easier to find, but this is arranging. Say you have all of Kundera’s books, but all you want is to re-read a very comforting passage in one. Do you have to remember that it was an edition with a white spine? Or some of your reference books are green and some are blue, so…do you just stand there and stare at the spines until you find it? Or does your memory of your books rearrange itself so that you end up with all the colors memorized and you can find your poetry even though it’s all helter skelter mixed up with your nonfiction and your short essays?

1. In fairness, I should point out that this story came from a “MarketReady” Q&A about preparing a house to be sold. [nyt]
2. That said, it seems like finding a book in a modest (<1,000 volume) personal library organized by color (or any other arbitrary characteristic) works like finding a car in a parking garage. You just remember where you left it.