I absolutely organise my books by height. It looks neater that way, but also in the past I bought flat packed bookcases that would always have one shelf that wasn't as tall as the others, forcing me to only put paperbacks on that shelf. So it was just natural to organise them all by height
I have so many biographies I've been considering dividing them into male and female sections. With one exception. I'll put the biographies of Warren Beatty with the women. It's what he'd want.
I have a PhD on the topic of psychopathy and can confirm method of book arrangement is not one of the cardinal traits. What it does highlight though is his preference for finding things based on visual appearance as opposed to hers which is concept based. The former being better if you aren't sure where something is, while the latter relying on memory. The latter however is also more likely to lead to disputes when other people who want to find the same book, do not share the same rule of thumb when it comes to what category books should be. Especially when they could fit multiple catagories. I didnt hear any domestic rumblings related to Richards "is it big or is it small" system?
There are incredibly few books that I have read more than once. Once a book goes on the shelf, it is officially an ornament. I'm with Richard on that one, you arrange them in a way that looks nice, alphabetical order is ridiculous. My son organises his books by piling them up on his bedroom floor next to his bookshelf.
Yes. I read voraciously in my 20's, and I always thought I'd have plenty of time to take the books off the shelf again some day and read them again. Now, in my early 50's, I realise that I don't have enough time left to read those books again and it saddens me. Tempus fugit and all that.
I’m with Richard on the book height thing. It makes practical sense to group books together as it allows you to maximise the number of shelves. I assume Marinas approach only works for posh people with huge houses or poor people who don’t like books.
Size definitely comes into it because you have to put all the really big books on a shelf with a lot of height above, and so on down the shelf gap heights. I think the thing that really divides people tho is whether they have all the spines pulled to near the front of the shelf so as to present a flat wall of books, or if they push them all to the back.
Agreed - I'm a flat waller and find back pushers both absurd and contemptible. The point of deep bookshelves is to disguise irritating book depth variations behind the flat wall of ostensible tranquil consistency.
Ah ... so this IS actually the room for an argument!! Great to hear you having a little disagreement and on such a key philosophical topic as organising bookshelves :) It's a classic multi-level issue posing as a dichotomy - I have mine primarily by size so I can fix the shelf positions and then also by topic - or the other way around if you like. It's a BOTH kind of issue. I am really not a podcast kind of person but you two have got me hooked with The Rest is Entertainment. Keep up the good work.
I will also mention this is natural human brain thinking. We all organise differently. There is an amazing video game called "unpacking" where you follow a woman through her life as she moves house and the QA testing was quite difficult they said. To some people kettles should be in cupboard, to others, on the cooker. Some people put shoes by front door, some in wardrobes. Its all cultural norms and bias. Book organising solutions like games like "A little to the Left" show you there are multiple ways to do everything. Unpacking is on mobile now, very strong recommendation for this indie darling
I'm both: books are grouped into sections (so all media ones would be together, like Marina), but then loosely by size within sections. Also relevant that some of my shelves are different heights, so sometimes have to put small books together on a small shelf!
I don't have many books on display these days but when I did there were two sections or sets of shelving. One was for indivdual books (or two) and they were sorted alphaetically by author name. The second was for multiple books by the same author, where all their works were together, usually in release order. So all of Tolkien's were together, Stephen King's were together and so on. I only really had fictional paperbacks, so other types weren't an issue.
Me too. I like mine symetrical. My hardback shelf has the tallest on the ends and goes down in size towards the middle. Another shelf is full of paperbacks that are different sizes, so they follow the same pattern and another shelf, they're all the same size-ish. My other book shelves, they're all just crammed wherever they'll fit. I know where everything is and that's all that matters but the 3 shelves facing you as you walk into my living room are pretty too - which is nice.
I just turned round to look at my mini library because i wasnt sure how i did it, and lo and behold its according to size! its also done that way because i have in areas fit books ontop of other books because it fits easier and still looks tidy.
arrange books by size - regular + matching and colour, not in batches, but mixed in pleasing variegated patches, then finalise by eclecticity to externalise my specialness. i sound like such a knob, but the books don't lie. laughed so much at your conversation :)
17:12 I just loved Richard getting so passionate about it given that normally he’s so moderated and non-confrontational. But I agree that a very small book could get lost next to something far bigger. I also display mine with size in mind. I used to be a visual merchandiser so my choice is based very much by how they look rather than the ability to find.
Totally with Richard on the arranging of books. I have thematic sections, but within these sections there are subsections for different sizes. Once you have a sufficient number of books in each section, you can not just easily sort them into size-based sections - but you might also really have to, because the more there are, the greater the risk would otherwise be of a tiny paperback being placed between a giant brick of a reference book and a thin but incredibly 'tall' book. Furthermore, if you divide sections into groupings by size, you can also make better use of the different parts which many shelves have, i.e. the low-ceiling ones which can only house 'short' paperbacks or the large ones which would be wasted on short books - or even actively arrange shelve floorboards in that way. Finally, I also arrange books by colour within subsections because it is very pleasing to the eye, especially in larger shelves. In order to still be able to find things it is of course desirable (but also, in my experience, fairly easy) to arrive at a good compromise between making thematic sections relatively large (making it harder to find things in this necessarily non-alphabetic arrangement, but containing enough books to provide several in each colour & size) and relatively small (where advantages & disadvantages are of course the opposite of the former). The better you are at remembering the colour of individual books, the more you can go for large sections.
I am a physical media person and have differing ways of organising depending on the media. Music is separated into vinyl or CD and then ordered alphabetically then chronologically, as is Music DVD & Blu-ray. Films are organised into either Blu-ray or DVD and then on film title. Books are arranged in whatever space they occupy, so large hardback "nice" books are put in a prominent shelf where as paperbacks can be stored where they fit.
I am even hunting down vintage editions of Terry Pratchett's books to replace the larger format books that I have been given as gifts, so it can all fit on the same shelf.
Shelves numbered and spreadsheet. Boom! Job done. The perspective threw me when Richard waved his hand towards the camera. Marina looked like she was two feet tall.
Richard missed a real trick not responding to Brooklyn Beckham's book or "The World's 100 Most Important Infinity Pools" with "I preferred the audiobook version".
Sorry Marina, I worked in a library for my gap year, and so ever since I've put fiction A-Z, but the top 4 or 5 shelves are Octavo, and the bottom 2 are Quarto-- in one house I even had a Folio shelf at the bottom! So I'm afraid size does matter-- not least because you can squeeze more books per linear foot of shelving if you do it that way.
Marina is such a refreshing presence. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed ‘discovering’ her in ‘real life’ on this podcast, having enjoyed her writing in the Guardian previously. Marina was great on the US election coverage too.
It's so funny about the colour matching books. I watched here recently here and interview of Amy Sedaris and her New York apartment and she colour matches her books!
I started listening to "The Rest Is History" after you talked about it, and I started playing find multiple books on Dominic Sandbrook shelf as he have more then 1 book 4 times (I try to do it without stopping the video)
Classic divide between people who want/need a working library, and people who can take a little more time to find things for the sake of aesthetics (number of books involved also a big factor of course)
To the person who pointed out Richard's frequent use of "by and large" on another video: Damn you!!! 😂 Now it really sticks out and gets to me. So, to share the suffering and lighten the burden, may you, from now on join me in my plight 😋 Greetings from Germany
Fiction is by author , and within author by date of publication. Hardbacks are on different bookcases from softcovers just because it's practical. Nonfiction also by author within subject but they are mostly history. Cookbooks are next to the kitchen and organised by cuisine. Outsized books (Atlases and such) are on a special shelf.. We have over 2500 books. catalogued on Goodreads so that we can keep track and reduce the risk of buying duplicates.
I agree with Richard! My bookshelf is done by size and then by collections/genre. I have some that are large so the don’t fit on a standard shelf standing up. So the larger books are together on a shelf that is set larger to accommodate them. Then my shorter books like hardbacks and paperbacks are on a shorter shelf. Tallest books to the left and shorter books to the right.
Looking forward to a special edition of "The Rest Is... Shelfies", where photos of viewers bookshelves are assessed and rated on a scale of 1-10 based on how much of a sociopath the contributor is deemed to be.
I read novels on my Kindle so my bookshelf is mainly non-fiction and the sizing for that is all over the place. When I was a kid I organised from largest on the left to smallest on the right. Now there’s more non-fiction in the mix I organise by category first, then within that size going from largest on the left to smallest on the right. However within that category if the height allows I put similar colours together so say there are two books of the same size in a category and one is dark blue and one light blue I might put the dark blue one on the left of the light blue book depending on how dark the previous colour is. Oh and I bring all the spines to the front edge of the shelf. It does mean that the shelves look more like a slowly descending sound wave but I wanted to find a balance between visual harmony and the logic of having similar topics together.
What happens if a staff member leaves the BBC or expires. Do they reshoot the loop so that person doesn't appear in future shows. Marina, "We could have a tight four hours on this..." 😆 "... that's a war crime..." 😆 Who'd have thought that a discussion of book selves could be so fascinating. The clickbait title for this episode is really strong. Richard, "People don't believe that people can write jokes." Jimmy Carr rolls up his sleeves and pulls out his slide-rule.
National libraries (ones were you have to request a book, you cannot browse yourself) organise their books by size just as Richard. This is due to space being the limiting factor. When I had a tour, they said if a book is moved from one shelf to another it will be lost forever as there is a system linking the book to a location (not genre, not isbn, not author) and so to find a misplaced item you would have to look through every shelf, every box for this item. You also would not be able to easily spot something is misplaced, you would have to do a complete audit!
I just place books how it feels right? Like I have a shelf in the toilet where I keep some books for perusing, also I just think it looks nice and I just placed them so it gives me a satisfied feeling. Lol. I feel so comparatively whimsical. Also I didn't know Richard was a comic?
He's not a stand up but he is very funny, and has been excellent on panel shows and on Taskmaster. His skill with words really comes through on 'the unbelievable truth'.
a couple of years ago on facebook, I made a joke about Boris Johnson on a comment thread under some news story about him, maybe from The Guardian. I used very specific words. And two days later a Daily Mash article came out with the exact same phrasing I had used, they had definitely copied it from my comment. I kind of felt flattered, and big headed, and felt ok about it. But I would rather I was getting the credit and money for it
The big hardback books go on the big shelf, normally at the bottom. It is a bit annoying when there is a series of books where the majority are paperback but one is the hardback version
I have always ordered things alphabetically by author or artist. Books, vinyl, DVDs ,CDs etc. within each section books are chronological and tipped forward if I haven’t read them yet. It drives me mad that I can’t organise my Kindle and Audible books the same way.
Love the section on how to order your books (and I thought my wife was OCD) although I disagree with Richard's "Robocop" left to right head movement showing how he would view the books on his book shelf as this would imply they are all the same height ... unless he has different shelves for different heights 🤔
You can see how I organise my bookshelves on "bookshelf tour" on my channel. I have 13 compartments, each with its own theme, one is a petrolhead shelf for books about cars (including a tome by a certain Jeremy Clarkson), one is a Victorian shelf for Dickens , the Brontes and the like, one is Physical TBR=books I haven't read yet (TBR=To Be Read), a nostalgia shelf for books which remind me of childhood and my early adulthood... I also have various knick knacks along with the books like model cars on the petrolhead shelf, a model theatre on the plays shelf etc,,,
My books are first sorted by type and theme (nonfiction by subject like literary history, children's books, novels by language, dictionary) and then depending on the type of book, by author alphabetically, or chronologically, or for comedy books just vibes 😂
YES! Finally someone who realizes the utter horror of organizing books by colour (or size?!). Marina will always have friends among librarians now. For a fun read, check out Anne Fadiman's collection of essays Ex libris, where she writes about the love of books (and proper organizing schemes)
Yes. Yes, Richard is psychopath 😂 is it me or did marina totally get the wrong thread in the book question, or is it the editing? I get the feeling the editing on this vodcast has become more aggressive recently and I quite often loose a thread or feel like an entire section has been edited out? Is it coincidence that this aligns with the “paid for” tier with extra footage that the rest of us plebs dont get to see?
I absolutely organize my books by size, it makes so much sense! Like Richard said (in a way): it’s just weird to see a midget book between several (or even just a couple) huge books!
Sorry Richard. I read the books and then they get sent on for someone else to read. The only books I keep are reference books. I prefer the old crime books simply because they used a smaller font etc. Heyer, Christie, Marsh etc, all c200pp and don’t weigh a ton to slip in a bag.
On a show a while ago, Richard talked about his appearance on The Wheel. He said something extraordinary happened and he would tell all when the show aired. The show aired last Saturday and no mention of it, or was it only for Club members?
I forget the name of the politician but he was being interviewed on TV and on the shelf behind him was the autobiography of Ann-Margret. Didn't expect that.
I am a book by height organiser and even find it hard to look at books in a library because of that .. thank fully a lot of bookstores tend towards the more aestheticly pleasing organisation within displays
I organize my books by author (I have a lovely Diana Wynne Jones shrine!) and after that it's just vibes based chaos. Big books go on the bottom shelves though!
There’s an interview with Lil Wayne and Eminem where they’re laughing about how often they have to google their own lyrics to check themselves while writing new music. They’re very funny!
i am a lunatic so i have my books ordered by my personal opinions on the quality of the works. for example nothing belongs on the Tolkein shelf however Orson Scott Card and Rowling can go together. I also have more than one copy of most of my absolute favorites, one for reading one for "decoration" but i dont own any books that i dont love lol
In days of yore, when Saturday football kicked off at 3pm and ended at 4.45pm, the journalists had until ~4.10pm to phone-in their first interim report which was available in the newsagents at ~6pm. Around the country this was done on coloured paper editions which were colloquially referred to as "the green ‘un", "the pink ‘un", ‘’the blue ‘un" etc. The remainder of the match was then added to a later version of the article in subsequent print runs. Many the night that I would stagger out of a nightclub in the wee small hours of Sunday to buy "a pink ‘un” (in my case, The Sports Argus) to read the match reports on the night bus - unless I "got lucky", when naturally the football reports were relegated to the breakfast table.
An aspiring standup comedian friend was accused of nicking jokes by an established (on tv, radio) comedian, on the circuit some years ago. I don’t know what the material was, needless to say it potentially screwed up his chance of ever establishing himself as a standup. So I totally believe Richard saying his generation, where gossip was concerned, were real hatchet merchants.
День тому
A series is ordered from right to left, so the end of book one is next to the beginning of book two
Love hearing Lateral getting the recognition it deserves. Love the podcast :)
I'm surprised he hasn't been snaffled by the Beeb, although he's done a great job ploughing his own furrow, so good luck to him.
"well that's a war crime!" 😂😂😂😂❤
I absolutely organise my books by height. It looks neater that way, but also in the past I bought flat packed bookcases that would always have one shelf that wasn't as tall as the others, forcing me to only put paperbacks on that shelf. So it was just natural to organise them all by height
The Tom Scott shout out was unexpected but so happy it was! Lateral is excellent!
Is this meant to be read in a Yoda voice?
I have so many biographies I've been considering dividing them into male and female sections. With one exception. I'll put the biographies of Warren Beatty with the women. It's what he'd want.
Five spots of "by and large" this week
this made me laugh, i read it as soon as it was said
I've been listening to this on Spotify and just came here to comment.... funniest argument ever!! It's a war crime 😂😂
I have a PhD on the topic of psychopathy and can confirm method of book arrangement is not one of the cardinal traits. What it does highlight though is his preference for finding things based on visual appearance as opposed to hers which is concept based. The former being better if you aren't sure where something is, while the latter relying on memory. The latter however is also more likely to lead to disputes when other people who want to find the same book, do not share the same rule of thumb when it comes to what category books should be. Especially when they could fit multiple catagories. I didnt hear any domestic rumblings related to Richards "is it big or is it small" system?
Richard just actively trolling Marina on the books - brilliant
I order my books exactly the same way Richard does. Marina's husband's method sounds utterly mental.
I don't think he was, it makes perfect sense and I also organise my books by height! It looks much neater
Am I the only one who had to Google Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney? I must be getting old.
No you are not and even after googling them I didn't recognise their photos
No idea who they are in fact they quite often mention folk I’ve never heard of….
I knew about Sydney Sweeney ('for two reasons...fnar, fnar!') but hadn't remembered he was her co-star in Anyone but You.
It's just more efficient to group books by sizes. You can often get a whole extra shelf in your Oak effect Billy Bookcase if you're smart about it.
My books are entirely organised by where I felt like putting them
That means you don't have enough of them.
@ oh god I have so, so many
@@tonythesuperperson Good for you! 😃
There are incredibly few books that I have read more than once. Once a book goes on the shelf, it is officially an ornament. I'm with Richard on that one, you arrange them in a way that looks nice, alphabetical order is ridiculous.
My son organises his books by piling them up on his bedroom floor next to his bookshelf.
I’ve never read a book more than once. The very idea seems insane to me.
Yes. I read voraciously in my 20's, and I always thought I'd have plenty of time to take the books off the shelf again some day and read them again. Now, in my early 50's, I realise that I don't have enough time left to read those books again and it saddens me. Tempus fugit and all that.
I’m with Richard on the book height thing. It makes practical sense to group books together as it allows you to maximise the number of shelves.
I assume Marinas approach only works for posh people with huge houses or poor people who don’t like books.
Size definitely comes into it because you have to put all the really big books on a shelf with a lot of height above, and so on down the shelf gap heights. I think the thing that really divides people tho is whether they have all the spines pulled to near the front of the shelf so as to present a flat wall of books, or if they push them all to the back.
Agreed - I'm a flat waller and find back pushers both absurd and contemptible.
The point of deep bookshelves is to disguise irritating book depth variations behind the flat wall of ostensible tranquil consistency.
Ah ... so this IS actually the room for an argument!!
Great to hear you having a little disagreement and on such a key philosophical topic as organising bookshelves :)
It's a classic multi-level issue posing as a dichotomy - I have mine primarily by size so I can fix the shelf positions and then also by topic - or the other way around if you like. It's a BOTH kind of issue.
I am really not a podcast kind of person but you two have got me hooked with The Rest is Entertainment. Keep up the good work.
Finally, sanity prevails! Shelf height and topics.
From the best gameshow podcast (sort of), "don't look at your bookshelves, don't look at your books."
Great gameshow, when you think about it
Judging by zoom calls I’ve seen on TV most people’s book shelves are a random mess with no thought given to even tidiness!
I will also mention this is natural human brain thinking. We all organise differently.
There is an amazing video game called "unpacking" where you follow a woman through her life as she moves house and the QA testing was quite difficult they said.
To some people kettles should be in cupboard, to others, on the cooker.
Some people put shoes by front door, some in wardrobes.
Its all cultural norms and bias.
Book organising solutions like games like "A little to the Left" show you there are multiple ways to do everything.
Unpacking is on mobile now, very strong recommendation for this indie darling
I'm both: books are grouped into sections (so all media ones would be together, like Marina), but then loosely by size within sections. Also relevant that some of my shelves are different heights, so sometimes have to put small books together on a small shelf!
I don't have many books on display these days but when I did there were two sections or sets of shelving. One was for indivdual books (or two) and they were sorted alphaetically by author name. The second was for multiple books by the same author, where all their works were together, usually in release order. So all of Tolkien's were together, Stephen King's were together and so on. I only really had fictional paperbacks, so other types weren't an issue.
I'm with Richard on organising books
Me too. I like mine symetrical. My hardback shelf has the tallest on the ends and goes down in size towards the middle. Another shelf is full of paperbacks that are different sizes, so they follow the same pattern and another shelf, they're all the same size-ish. My other book shelves, they're all just crammed wherever they'll fit. I know where everything is and that's all that matters but the 3 shelves facing you as you walk into my living room are pretty too - which is nice.
Yeah, me too.
I just turned round to look at my mini library because i wasnt sure how i did it, and lo and behold its according to size! its also done that way because i have in areas fit books ontop of other books because it fits easier and still looks tidy.
Honestly who gives a fuck
And me!
arrange books by size - regular + matching and colour, not in batches, but mixed in pleasing variegated patches, then finalise by eclecticity to externalise my specialness. i sound like such a knob, but the books don't lie.
laughed so much at your conversation :)
I'm reminded of The Two Ronnies confusing library sketch - "all the red books are over here, all the green books are over there..."
17:12 I just loved Richard getting so passionate about it given that normally he’s so moderated and non-confrontational.
But I agree that a very small book could get lost next to something far bigger.
I also display mine with size in mind. I used to be a visual merchandiser so my choice is based very much by how they look rather than the ability to find.
Totally with Richard on the arranging of books. I have thematic sections, but within these sections there are subsections for different sizes. Once you have a sufficient number of books in each section, you can not just easily sort them into size-based sections - but you might also really have to, because the more there are, the greater the risk would otherwise be of a tiny paperback being placed between a giant brick of a reference book and a thin but incredibly 'tall' book.
Furthermore, if you divide sections into groupings by size, you can also make better use of the different parts which many shelves have, i.e. the low-ceiling ones which can only house 'short' paperbacks or the large ones which would be wasted on short books - or even actively arrange shelve floorboards in that way.
Finally, I also arrange books by colour within subsections because it is very pleasing to the eye, especially in larger shelves. In order to still be able to find things it is of course desirable (but also, in my experience, fairly easy) to arrive at a good compromise between making thematic sections relatively large (making it harder to find things in this necessarily non-alphabetic arrangement, but containing enough books to provide several in each colour & size) and relatively small (where advantages & disadvantages are of course the opposite of the former). The better you are at remembering the colour of individual books, the more you can go for large sections.
Marina got the introduction correct. It took a long time for Richard to get her polished.
I am a physical media person and have differing ways of organising depending on the media. Music is separated into vinyl or CD and then ordered alphabetically then chronologically, as is Music DVD & Blu-ray. Films are organised into either Blu-ray or DVD and then on film title. Books are arranged in whatever space they occupy, so large hardback "nice" books are put in a prominent shelf where as paperbacks can be stored where they fit.
Big love to Lateral (and everything Tom Scott does)
War crime😂 I had my books sorted by height.
Richard Osman at 15:20 "Big books, I like". There's a song in that.
Really nailing the intro these days Marina!! ❤❤
Yep, with Richard. By book size, author and theme. An author often has same publisher so book size doesn’t ruin sorting by author.
I am even hunting down vintage editions of Terry Pratchett's books to replace the larger format books that I have been given as gifts, so it can all fit on the same shelf.
I’m imagining my Italian in laws screaming at the pronunciation of Giorgio de Chirico. Glad it’s not just me :)
I ground my teeth ;)
Pantone Colour Chart of a book spines... coming to Esty any minute.
Shelves numbered and spreadsheet. Boom! Job done. The perspective threw me when Richard waved his hand towards the camera. Marina looked like she was two feet tall.
Richard missed a real trick not responding to Brooklyn Beckham's book or "The World's 100 Most Important Infinity Pools" with "I preferred the audiobook version".
Sorry Marina, I worked in a library for my gap year, and so ever since I've put fiction A-Z, but the top 4 or 5 shelves are Octavo, and the bottom 2 are Quarto-- in one house I even had a Folio shelf at the bottom! So I'm afraid size does matter-- not least because you can squeeze more books per linear foot of shelving if you do it that way.
Marina is such a refreshing presence. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed ‘discovering’ her in ‘real life’ on this podcast, having enjoyed her writing in the Guardian previously. Marina was great on the US election coverage too.
It's so funny about the colour matching books. I watched here recently here and interview of Amy Sedaris and her New York apartment and she colour matches her books!
I started listening to "The Rest Is History" after you talked about it, and I started playing find multiple books on Dominic Sandbrook shelf as he have more then 1 book 4 times (I try to do it without stopping the video)
Shelving books by size isn't as mad as it sounds. I worked in a college library which had an oversize section. Still in Dewey order though
Classic divide between people who want/need a working library, and people who can take a little more time to find things for the sake of aesthetics (number of books involved also a big factor of course)
Best show yet. “That’s a war crime”. Snorted. Perfect moment
I could live without the idea, that anything on Sky is just "bloody brilliant.''
That Sky bit always gets 1.75 playback speed from me.
Bills gotta be paid I guess haha
My bookcases are arranged by topic and period. Not quite the Dewey Decimal system but that sort of thing. Helps with my increasingly bad memory😅
Oh I love this discussion about books. I needed it today! I’m on team Marina!!! ❤❤
To the person who pointed out Richard's frequent use of "by and large" on another video: Damn you!!! 😂 Now it really sticks out and gets to me.
So, to share the suffering and lighten the burden, may you, from now on join me in my plight 😋 Greetings from Germany
Thank God we all look at things differently.
Fiction is by author , and within author by date of publication.
Hardbacks are on different bookcases from softcovers just because it's practical.
Nonfiction also by author within subject but they are mostly history.
Cookbooks are next to the kitchen and organised by cuisine.
Outsized books (Atlases and such) are on a special shelf..
We have over 2500 books. catalogued on Goodreads so that we can keep track and reduce the risk of buying duplicates.
I agree with Richard! My bookshelf is done by size and then by collections/genre. I have some that are large so the don’t fit on a standard shelf standing up. So the larger books are together on a shelf that is set larger to accommodate them. Then my shorter books like hardbacks and paperbacks are on a shorter shelf. Tallest books to the left and shorter books to the right.
Please can we have a special episode of Marina taking back control and just reorganising her books
Anyone who can comfortably sit in their living room whilst the windows are being cleaned is probably a psychopath.
I turn my chair to watch them and sip my drink. I've paid for this service after all. Might as well observe.
Looking forward to a special edition of "The Rest Is... Shelfies", where photos of viewers bookshelves are assessed and rated on a scale of 1-10 based on how much of a sociopath the contributor is deemed to be.
The trouble with colour coding your library is that if you have multiple editions of something they might end up on different shelves. Impossible.
Giorgio de Chirico - great taste Marina
It's like the Complete Don Martin next to Viz Top Tips. Madness.
I read novels on my Kindle so my bookshelf is mainly non-fiction and the sizing for that is all over the place. When I was a kid I organised from largest on the left to smallest on the right. Now there’s more non-fiction in the mix I organise by category first, then within that size going from largest on the left to smallest on the right. However within that category if the height allows I put similar colours together so say there are two books of the same size in a category and one is dark blue and one light blue I might put the dark blue one on the left of the light blue book depending on how dark the previous colour is. Oh and I bring all the spines to the front edge of the shelf. It does mean that the shelves look more like a slowly descending sound wave but I wanted to find a balance between visual harmony and the logic of having similar topics together.
Best episode so far. I laughed and laughed at the book sorting.
What happens if a staff member leaves the BBC or expires. Do they reshoot the loop so that person doesn't appear in future shows.
Marina, "We could have a tight four hours on this..." 😆 "... that's a war crime..." 😆 Who'd have thought that a discussion of book selves could be so fascinating.
The clickbait title for this episode is really strong.
Richard, "People don't believe that people can write jokes." Jimmy Carr rolls up his sleeves and pulls out his slide-rule.
14:28 want a four hour podcast solely on Marina’s book collection.
Just Richard though, no Marina Jekyll...
Richard; 'Where does he keep his books.' Marina: 'What books?' Marina is a delightful snob( in a blue-stocking way)
National libraries (ones were you have to request a book, you cannot browse yourself) organise their books by size just as Richard. This is due to space being the limiting factor. When I had a tour, they said if a book is moved from one shelf to another it will be lost forever as there is a system linking the book to a location (not genre, not isbn, not author) and so to find a misplaced item you would have to look through every shelf, every box for this item. You also would not be able to easily spot something is misplaced, you would have to do a complete audit!
I just place books how it feels right? Like I have a shelf in the toilet where I keep some books for perusing, also I just think it looks nice and I just placed them so it gives me a satisfied feeling. Lol. I feel so comparatively whimsical.
Also I didn't know Richard was a comic?
He's not a stand up but he is very funny, and has been excellent on panel shows and on Taskmaster. His skill with words really comes through on 'the unbelievable truth'.
a couple of years ago on facebook, I made a joke about Boris Johnson on a comment thread under some news story about him, maybe from The Guardian. I used very specific words. And two days later a Daily Mash article came out with the exact same phrasing I had used, they had definitely copied it from my comment. I kind of felt flattered, and big headed, and felt ok about it. But I would rather I was getting the credit and money for it
The big hardback books go on the big shelf, normally at the bottom. It is a bit annoying when there is a series of books where the majority are paperback but one is the hardback version
I have always ordered things alphabetically by author or artist. Books, vinyl, DVDs ,CDs etc. within each section books are chronological and tipped forward if I haven’t read them yet. It drives me mad that I can’t organise my Kindle and Audible books the same way.
Love the section on how to order your books (and I thought my wife was OCD) although I disagree with Richard's "Robocop" left to right head movement showing how he would view the books on his book shelf as this would imply they are all the same height ... unless he has different shelves for different heights 🤔
You can see how I organise my bookshelves on "bookshelf tour" on my channel. I have 13 compartments, each with its own theme, one is a petrolhead shelf for books about cars (including a tome by a certain Jeremy Clarkson), one is a Victorian shelf for Dickens , the Brontes and the like, one is Physical TBR=books I haven't read yet (TBR=To Be Read), a nostalgia shelf for books which remind me of childhood and my early adulthood... I also have various knick knacks along with the books like model cars on the petrolhead shelf, a model theatre on the plays shelf etc,,,
Not just height, but width as well; they have to fit within the limited space on the shelves. I didn’t realise I was a war criminal. 😂
Get to the Hague before you get a knock on the door.
I would subscribe to a Marina's Countdown podcast. Like cats does countdown, but just the number one.
My books are first sorted by type and theme (nonfiction by subject like literary history, children's books, novels by language, dictionary) and then depending on the type of book, by author alphabetically, or chronologically, or for comedy books just vibes 😂
Didn't think bookshelves would be the thing that would break them.
YES! Finally someone who realizes the utter horror of organizing books by colour (or size?!). Marina will always have friends among librarians now.
For a fun read, check out Anne Fadiman's collection of essays Ex libris, where she writes about the love of books (and proper organizing schemes)
Yes. Yes, Richard is psychopath 😂 is it me or did marina totally get the wrong thread in the book question, or is it the editing? I get the feeling the editing on this vodcast has become more aggressive recently and I quite often loose a thread or feel like an entire section has been edited out? Is it coincidence that this aligns with the “paid for” tier with extra footage that the rest of us plebs dont get to see?
I absolutely organize my books by size, it makes so much sense! Like Richard said (in a way): it’s just weird to see a midget book between several (or even just a couple) huge books!
Sorry Richard. I read the books and then they get sent on for someone else to read. The only books I keep are reference books.
I prefer the old crime books simply because they used a smaller font etc. Heyer, Christie, Marsh etc, all c200pp and don’t weigh a ton to slip in a bag.
On a show a while ago, Richard talked about his appearance on The Wheel.
He said something extraordinary happened and he would tell all when the show aired. The show aired last Saturday and no mention of it, or was it only for Club members?
I forget the name of the politician but he was being interviewed on TV and on the shelf behind him was the autobiography of Ann-Margret. Didn't expect that.
I love your book organising discussion.
I completely understand the bookshelf problem, mine has changed over time and now is just alphabetical, it used to be by genre and alphabet
I've a custom made library with different shelf heights. Of course I organize my books by height. Send me to The Hague.
I’m with Richard on the book sorting.
I am a book by height organiser and even find it hard to look at books in a library because of that .. thank fully a lot of bookstores tend towards the more aestheticly pleasing organisation within displays
There's a point at about 16:40 you can see Marina is thinking 'Yep, Richard is a 6ft 7 Patrick Bateman'
I organize my books by author (I have a lovely Diana Wynne Jones shrine!) and after that it's just vibes based chaos. Big books go on the bottom shelves though!
Always enjoy my weekly fix of woolly East Coast Latte drinking musings.
There’s an interview with Lil Wayne and Eminem where they’re laughing about how often they have to google their own lyrics to check themselves while writing new music. They’re very funny!
I organise my books by colour... and the apps on my phone by colour... like a totally normal totally sane person
Richard is absolutely right to use size as his criterion for arranging books.
i am a lunatic so i have my books ordered by my personal opinions on the quality of the works. for example nothing belongs on the Tolkein shelf however Orson Scott Card and Rowling can go together. I also have more than one copy of most of my absolute favorites, one for reading one for "decoration" but i dont own any books that i dont love lol
I like the bit where they spend a minute or so essentially saying Sky exists.
In days of yore, when Saturday football kicked off at 3pm and ended at 4.45pm, the journalists had until ~4.10pm to phone-in their first interim report which was available in the newsagents at ~6pm. Around the country this was done on coloured paper editions which were colloquially referred to as "the green ‘un", "the pink ‘un", ‘’the blue ‘un" etc. The remainder of the match was then added to a later version of the article in subsequent print runs. Many the night that I would stagger out of a nightclub in the wee small hours of Sunday to buy "a pink ‘un” (in my case, The Sports Argus) to read the match reports on the night bus - unless I "got lucky", when naturally the football reports were relegated to the breakfast table.
16:16 FIGHT!!!!!!!!!😬😬😬😬
TIL Tom scott uses the David Bodycombe from Only Connect. I wonder if they knew each other before Tom appeared on Only Connect
social worker assessments include the idea "are there any books in the home"??
I put away the books I‘ve already read. The others are ordered by priority. There might also be a pile of shame.😅
I have my books like my records, in genre only my books are of different sizes yet arranged exactly the same regardless of the spinal length 🙂
An aspiring standup comedian friend was accused of nicking jokes by an established (on tv, radio) comedian, on the circuit some years ago. I don’t know what the material was, needless to say it potentially screwed up his chance of ever establishing himself as a standup. So I totally believe Richard saying his generation, where gossip was concerned, were real hatchet merchants.
A series is ordered from right to left, so the end of book one is next to the beginning of book two
The original versions of the 1999 reports were true though. Man Utd were poor and outplayed. But results are the only thing that matters in finals.