NP - How do you sort your books? Respond with OFFLIST in subj if want to participate

[Mark Kohut]

Well, this thread seems right for my posting of a thread for OFFLIST. Had decided not to until this thread (which, however,
does show many probably have too many books already, as I do)
 I have been storing far too many, have to move again and MUST downsize. I used to think I could get something for most of them, particularly the unread ones but the explosion of publishing (in my lifetime) and now the huge wavefuture of digital books makes most of them worth
almost nothing. Creative destruction. Except for the words.(I remember saving from delivering newspapers or early retail jobs to buy some 'classic'
--like Nietzsche or a Shakespeare play for my self-education and now from Plato to Nietzsche and beyond they are all free online somewhere. Wondrous to me. I just hate to dump them, even in library bins where they get sold for pennies, or discarded anyway but some will go there.
Trying to give cheap paperbacks to students. Other worthy places. 

It occurred to me to offer them to friends, folks like plisters, full of eccentric reading habits,
some of whom might like some of my obcure university press books, (non-valuable) galleys, o.p books, 
cheap editions of some classics? Misc. shit. ( I gathered a lot because of my jobs)
I'll just list w description if necessary in an OFFLIST way and thread. 

So, I will offer them FREE to a good home if you want it--them--enough to pay postage and mailer. Postage for 
mailed books has standardized at @$3.99 for a single book. A single normal-sized 
book mailed within the continental United States ships for @2.85 and book protecting 
mailers cost about $1.14......for 12 at Staples.....So.........

Warning: Even $3.99 is TOO MUCH if you do not read it or into it, I say. 

European plisters, I will just ask for exact cost...but it may seldom be worth it to you, I daresay.




 

From: Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com>
To: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> 
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2012 11:22 AM
Subject: Re: NP - How do you sort your books?


Exactly what I'm trying to mitigate against. 

I over-think because I am. The spreadsheet thing is fun for me. I want to write some code on top of the database which will let me do statistics: e.g. calculate the net worth of the collection using online data. Then I can cycle out the crapper stuff, actually find things etc. Alls I have to do is enter the data when I get a book. Of course, this is complicated by age, and so I'll have to work in real terms when calculating value...like I said, fun! 


P.

On 13 August 2012 01:09, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

Similar principles (OK, habits) at work here: a few hundred in the (small)
>house at any one time, exchanged back and forth with 3-4000 shelved in the
>(large) storage shed out back. For the latter: prose fiction by author,
>poetry & drama ditto in their own groups, non-fiction by categories as few
>and broad as possible. Whenever they proliferate beyond history, mythology,
>current affairs, natural sciences, social sciences, and
>criticism/belles-lettres, I spend more time puzzling where a new book
>belongs (or where I thought an old one belonged many years ago) than I would
>searching for it.
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
>Of Bekah
>Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2012 8:16 AM
>To: Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>Cc: pynchon -l
>Subject: Re: NP - How do you sort your books?
>
>Because I sometimes actually have to go and hunt for a book,  and because I
>have several thousand books,  I try to keep my organization simple and
>useful.   I have three rooms of books - one room for fiction, , one for
>non-fiction and one for both but these are newer.   Fiction is organized
>alphabetically by author,  non-fiction by subject-matter.   Each room has
>its own set of books and is arranged separately - the books in one room go
>from A-Z and in the next room from A-Z - no split in the middle - the M - R
>section is not in a separate room.  (heh) .  Non-fiction is by
>subject-matter - old history is in one room and the rest is in the shared
>room for newer books.  Books get rotated into the old book rooms (stacks?)
>as the new book room (office/den?) fills up (over and over
>
>
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