Over genre-isation

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

Yesterday I went to the library. There I discovered that Jane Austen is not 'general literature', but 'young adults'. I learnt that most of Terry Pratchett's books are 'fantasy' but Lords and Ladies is 'science fiction'. Thankfully the two ghettoes are next to each other, striding shoulder to shoulder (if book shelves do, indeed, stride) into the nystery books.

Now, I can see why having some sort of classification of a 'I like Diana Wynne Jones (who unlike Austen is considered suitable for adult shelving) so might I like Susan Howatch?' Well, maybe, but it's certainly not a given. I can understand classifying books by the way they feel or by the themes they are likely to present. However, one man's fantasy is another man's poison. Would it not be simpler to keep the little stickers (if you like one with a house on, you might like another with a house on), but shelve them all alphabetically? It would certainly be easier to find things.

And why would one do it that way for hardbacks, but by genre for paperbacks? Why do they need to be carefully segregated? And isn't it more fun to randomly pick up something you've never heard of that just happens to catch your eye?

It's a mad world, my friends.

Anyway, back to the classification I do understand, please to complete the following sentences:

[Poll #239353]

Thankyou.

Comments

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

phlebas has the right of it, I feel.

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Tom Holt - depends which direction you want to go. In the slightly-more-silly direction: Rankin, Asprin, Pratchett; in the slightly-more-sensible direction: Sharpe, Stoppard, Frayn.

Haven't read anything by the other two :-(

Also, in the direction of random recommendations, read _Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil_ by John Berendt *now*, and then spend several weeks cursing the fact that he hasn't written anything else.

[aellia.livejournal.com]

Teach me how to *read* again.
I do read,but mostly books on history,especially local history of which there is much around the area I live in.
But it's been a long time since I've been able to totally immerse myself in a novel, I think the last one that I read,properly, was "Jude The Obscure" for my English A level a few years back..I liked it.
I'm dipping into "Stargazey Pie" at the moment..it's light and I can identify with the place ans the people.
xx

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The only Haruki Murakami I've read is Underground, which is might not be the base for recommendation that you're looking for, and in any case I don't think I can think of anything I've read that is at all quite like it. (After the Quake is on my wishlist.)

and regarding the first half of the post

[ewx.livejournal.com]

If a library (or bookshop or whatever) is going to divide things up by some kind of genre classification then I think the ideal is for each book to appear in all the places that it might fit, rather than just one of them. (e.g. Pratchett in both humour and fantasy.) For a library that might prove expensive, though; but you could work around this by having card markers in all but one of the places directing the reader to the location where the physical book might be found. (Symbolic links instead of hard links/copies, in other words.)

Shelving alphabetically still has a slight wrinkle: a book with multiple authors might be sought (or impulse-picked) from the position of any of the authors (e.g. Deus Irae belongs in both D and Z).

Hardbacks vs paperbacks just makes me wonder if different librarians are in charge of each l-)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

The Materials Department library works with a good system. It looks as if someone made an effort to sort things out into vague topics, metallurgy over there, composites here, etc. Then another person came along and made up a numerical classification completely unlike the one usually used for non-fiction in every library I've ever seen, but still went from one end to the other and included all the books that happened to be out of order that day, and put them on a computer catalogue. This has the effect that if you are looking for a particular book about bone you might consult the catalogue, walk around the library looking for the classmark, walk into the section about steel getting more and more worried, and eventually find the bone book between two completely unrelated things. It's very entertaining.

[lzz.livejournal.com]

Apparently the library is gradually moving back towards basic alphabetisation for fiction, which seems far more useful to me. I've seen some appalling classification decisions, which I am not allowed to change. Bah.
(Which library were you in, btw?)

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