Review of Georges Perec's book "Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books". Not a real review.
I'm not going to review this very short Perec's text. I'm going instead to write here an even shorter version of it from my point of view.
Moreover, the full Perec's text, translated in English, is available here.
Perec's text is not a real essay. According to the Oulipo literary manners, the author of "Life, a User's Manual" wrote a short maniacal classification of the problems in book organizing one faces.
I'm using Perec's set list to make what he did. Partly.
"...the problem of a library is shown to be twofold: a problem of space first of all, then a problem of order"
1. Space.
Books are not dispersed but assembled. Of course, there are different degrees of entropy in grouping books in a house, depending on their number, on the available space, on the importance they have for the inhabitants of the house.
Every room of the house is eligible to host books, theorically. Actually you won't find books in kitchens and bathrooms often, excepts for recipe books and books to be read on the bowl.
Interiors magazines and advertisments suggest us that books are to be stored in the living room and in the study, if any. There are even fake books used for this purpose.
About where to store the books in a room, even the interiors design fashion lets us more freedom. But books can stay almost everywhere, obviously. In a corner of the floor, for example, or in a glass case in the centre of the room.
About bookshelves, I'm going to list the kind of things you can commonly find there:
- Knickknacks
- Framed photos
- Ornamental mineral stones
- Glass vases containing any kind of substances (sand, coins, little balls, ashes, shells, ethnic buttons etc.)
- Candles
- Cute puppets
- Religious altars
- More
2. Order
I do not agree with Perec in his analysis of the kind of order/disorder in a personal library - or just partly.
In my humble opinion, ordering one's own books means first of all building a mirror of one's own mind. When you classify and store your own books, from the older to the newest and not read yet, you create a physical place that is shaped like a part of your neural net. That's why changing that storage is a very delicate job, almost like a brain surgery. Expecially when the change comes after a long time.
I hope you read the above lines the way they have to be read ;)
Did you draw the first picture? If yes then it was pretty awesome. :)
I did. thx :)
Wait!! This is a thing?? Why the hell has no one told me about this! I've been playing flappy bird and angry birds for years now... i think i already played the whole game 3 or 4 times!
I mostly store my books on my room, and i have almost no organization for them, guess my neural net is just that confusing... i only try to divide pleasure books from college books
this version is very impresive and i impressed and enjoyed to read your post.... i think it is too funny...
Paolo, I honestly did not read this writer, so I do not know what to say. and you read writers from Russia or Ukraine?
well, I read most of the most important russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, but not any contemporary one - except for a science-fiction writer, Dmitry Glukhovsky
Leo Tolstoy "War and Peace", "anna koreinina" , this is the best that was written, from what I read.
I loved also Gogol, Dostojevsky, Bulgakov, Gorkj, Majakovsky, Mandelstam, Kharms...
Bulgakov is that writer because of whom I cried and laughed. "canine heart" is the most emotional and realistic story that can be applied to our time ..
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i am not a book lover, in my honesty i would say that books must be kept at some specified place from where it can be easily taken for reading purpose. i have kept all of my books in a a shelf in my personal cupboard. to which i have an easy access all the time.
Am not really good in books and library keeping but coming from your point of view,
I think you are actually right based on what is obtainable today thereby giving easy access to pick and read from older to newer.
You summed it up quite nicely very glad to read this one thanks for sharing it in your blog :)
Thanks for explaining it had a great time reading it thanks for posting it :) and the art was super nice
i think i should consider reading this one time to find it and thanks for sharing it
great review by you about this cool thing this is :)