Book Physics?

[haldir]

I've been giving some thought to books and I wonder whether anyone else has experienced similar phenomena.

1. Why is it that no matter how carefully I calculate how many bookcases i need to buy to accommodate the books lying around my house, once the bookcases are bought there is never enough shelf space, leaving books lying about my house. Are the books breeding or is this some weird sort of quantum book physics thing where books pop into reality when phase space is available or is it a "conservation of piles" law?

2. Categorising by genre always leaves me with some poor lost souls. This is true no matter how many sub-genres I create. Is this a type of book fractals in operation?

3. I have also found that the more I use sub-genres the more it appears that book s can belong in more than one genre. I find this unsatisfyingly untidy to say nothing of expensive. Are these the same books or are they evolving to fit the sub-genres available? (I know, I know - its biology not physics but hey ho!) or are the books spontaneously shifting from one sub -genre to another depending on whether they are deemed to be "high lit" or "low lit"?

Any thoughts?

 

[Recidiva]

A large family means chaos.

Large labeled containers.

 

[rgraham666]

Hey hladir. Nice to see you back.

As far as your questions go, I have no idea. I've never studied that particular area of physics. Or any area for that matter.

I just pile my books on the floor when I run out of room.

 

[haldir]

ah - but the mystery is that these are all my own books. no additions from my family who all live somewhere else!

 

[Recidiva]

ah - but the mystery is that these are all my own books. no additions from my family who all live somewhere else!

Books ARE the family

 

[haldir]

oops - sorry! that explains a lot then. turning up out of nowhere, looking to be put up and helped out. not so much physics as sociology then.

This would also explain why the total mass of books is constantly increasing with no steady state being reached.

Rgraham - it's good to be back

 

[Recidiva]

oops - sorry! that explains a lot then. turning up out of nowhere, looking to be put up and helped out. not so much physics as sociology then.

This would also explain why the total mass of books is constantly increasing with no steady state being reached.

Rgraham - it's good to be back

Yup. Mine are in huge labeled plastic tubs except for those I absolutely must have in hand, in my bedroom and closet.

Mostly because it became impossible for me to find them by memory. Now they're in the garage and I can add to the collection as often as I want because I don't have to rearrange every single thing.

 

[trysail]

There is a fairly simple answer to the phenomena. Subsection three (originally postulated by Erasmus but not reduced to proof until the Victorian Age) of corollary thirty-four to Murphy's Law states:

The number of books in one's possession grows by an exponent derived from the number of one's bookshelves. This can be expressed by the following formula,

x=ƒ[b^(y+1)], where

x is the required number of bookshelves,
b is the existing number of books in one's possession, and
y is the existing number of bookshelves.

As can readily be seen, as b rises, x approaches ¥.

 

[Oblimo]

It's localized L-space phenomena:

"The relevant equation is Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. Mass distorts space into polyfractal L-space, in which Everywhere is also Everywhere Else."

 

[rgraham666]

It's localized L-space phenomena:

"The relevant equation is Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. Mass distorts space into polyfractal L-space, in which Everywhere is also Everywhere Else."

No wonder I keep getting lost in bookstores.

 

[Carnevil9]

I arrange mine by height. That way, it's easier to stack up another layer, horizontally, on top of the vertical ones that are directly on the shelf.

 

[TE999]

It's a sub-category of Parkinson's Law.

'Books expand to meet the space allotted to them'.

eg: The cubic footage in your house.

 

[NoJo]

I've been giving some thought to books and I wonder whether anyone else has experienced similar phenomena.

1. Why is it that no matter how carefully I calculate how many bookcases i need to buy to accommodate the books lying around my house, once the bookcases are bought there is never enough shelf space, leaving books lying about my house. Are the books breeding or is this some weird sort of quantum book physics thing where books pop into reality when phase space is available or is it a "conservation of piles" law?

2. Categorising by genre always leaves me with some poor lost souls. This is true no matter how many sub-genres I create. Is this a type of book fractals in operation?

3. I have also found that the more I use sub-genres the more it appears that book s can belong in more than one genre. I find this unsatisfyingly untidy to say nothing of expensive. Are these the same books or are they evolving to fit the sub-genres available? (I know, I know - its biology not physics but hey ho!) or are the books spontaneously shifting from one sub -genre to another depending on whether they are deemed to be "high lit" or "low lit"?

Any thoughts?

1. The floor makes a great bookshelf. Consider also the top of the fridge, toilet seat lid, and the backs of large pets (Basset hounds are especially good)

2. Arrange books alphabetically by First word on page 1 (ignore the endpaper, which is often blank).

3. That's a slightly tougher one. If you have the money you can solve it by buying a five-dimensional house.

 

[The_Fool]

Maybe that is what I need to put on the vice thread. Buying books.

 

[Xelebes]

Bibliology is a very difficult science, I agree.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I think that I must not be a real reader/writer. I can fit all of my books into one room. There's just the two floor-to-ceiling shelves, plus of course the other two that occupy the entire closet, plus the rolling bookcart by my writing chair.

That's absolutely it, other than the books stacked under the shelves, of course. And next to the shelves. And sideways on top of the already shelved books. And in the guest bedroom. And the hundred-odd in the wonderful bookshelf coffee table in the living room - those aren't "my" books per se. The ones in the bathrooms, master bedroom, and kitchen are merely transient nomadic texts of undiscernable ownership. The ones stacked in the dining room are ... dining, I presume. I haven't asked them lately.

 

[English Lady]

I think that I must not be a real reader/writer. I can fit all of my books into one room. There's just the two floor-to-ceiling shelves, plus of course the other two that occupy the entire closet, plus the rolling bookcart by my writing chair.

That's absolutely it, other than the books stacked under the shelves, of course. And next to the shelves. And sideways on top of the already shelved books. And in the guest bedroom. And the hundred-odd in the wonderful bookshelf coffee table in the living room - those aren't "my" books per se. The ones in the bathrooms, master bedroom, and kitchen are merely transient nomadic texts of undiscernable ownership. The ones stacked in the dining room are ... dining, I presume. I haven't asked them lately.

I completely relate to this, Shanglan, matters are exactly the same in my home -the guest bedroom. My daughter has books but of course, they don't count -well some of them do, but not outloud.

Horsey

and

Haldir -books are a law unto themselves, love.

 

[DerelictionOfSanity]

What you really need for overlapping genres is a bookshelf shaped like a 3D Venn diagram. This would, however, produce certain difficulties in being able to reach many of your books. Why bother sorting them? You're going to read them all again soon anyway, right?

Personally, the only books that I sort by subject are textbooks. The others tend to go by shape and size rather than anything else, which also helps reduce that exponential equation to a much simpler one.

y = x+1

where
y = total number of shelves required
x = number of shelves available

thus resulting in one shelf worth of books randomly distributed throughout the house at all times. Many of these will eventually accumulate on a bedside table, if available, due to a bizarre magnetobibliophilic attraction, causing the entire system to behave rather like an absorbing Markov process.

 

[only_more_so]

I've been giving some thought to books and I wonder whether anyone else has experienced similar phenomena.

1. Why is it that no matter how carefully I calculate how many bookcases i need to buy to accommodate the books lying around my house, once the bookcases are bought there is never enough shelf space, leaving books lying about my house. Are the books breeding or is this some weird sort of quantum book physics thing where books pop into reality when phase space is available or is it a "conservation of piles" law?

2. Categorising by genre always leaves me with some poor lost souls. This is true no matter how many sub-genres I create. Is this a type of book fractals in operation?

3. I have also found that the more I use sub-genres the more it appears that book s can belong in more than one genre. I find this unsatisfyingly untidy to say nothing of expensive. Are these the same books or are they evolving to fit the sub-genres available? (I know, I know - its biology not physics but hey ho!) or are the books spontaneously shifting from one sub -genre to another depending on whether they are deemed to be "high lit" or "low lit"?

Any thoughts?

Who calculates bookshelves? Guess and then add 50%.

As for categories... Make life simple, two categories, Fiction and Non-Fiction. Or how about hard cover and soft cover. Or by author. Or by color. I think sub-categories are alright if you have plenty of books in a sub-category, but sometimes you have to break down and say "Misc."

 

[BlackShanglan]

As for categories... Make life simple, two categories, Fiction and Non-Fiction. Or how about hard cover and soft cover. Or by author. Or by color. I think sub-categories are alright if you have plenty of books in a sub-category, but sometimes you have to break down and say "Misc."

Mine are mostly by nationality and period, I think largely because I love to sit down in my writing chair and be immediately surrounded by the late English decadents. I do have the poetry all together; it's clannish that way. Books about writing are all in the same small shelf in the closet, so as to prevent them from scaring the other volumes. The comics are in the living room, and books people have given me as gifts has a special and cherished place in the, ah, spare bedroom closet, where they are safer and more perfectly preserved than any other books I own.

Horsey

and

Haldir -books are a law unto themselves, love.

Kisses = {[EL+Horsey] + [EL+Haldir]}? Now there's some math I can really appreciate. Let's get factorial.

 

[haldir]

Thanks for all the help so far

I must confess that I had the niggling thought that L-space would be involved somehow. I must consult the Great Prophet and ponder this some more.

As for the question "Why bother sorting them?" - blasphemy, blasphemy blasphemy!!! You understand that it's not I who has a deep, primaeval need to classify my little biblio-children in some anal, systematic fashion. Oh no - it is my little cuties themselves who call out to me, reducing me to tears with their aching need for order.

Has anyone else discovered the joys of "structural" books. If I moved some of mine bits of my house would probably fall down. They have become the procrastinating DIYers friend.

Well better get to work. to you all for now

 

[EmeraldKitten]

I've noticed the same thing.
I have two bookcases, and they're both full-to-bursting, and I still have boxes as well as a couple laundry baskets full. One of the cases I got is a big beautiful thing with a couple drawers at the bottom, and it looked massive in the store. It still looks massive here, but I didn't fit that many on the thing. So the drawers were filled also.
It seems to me that books reproduce. They don't have only children, but they do have litters.
Now the last thing that bothers me, is how they reproduce.

P.S. My favorites are on the bookshelf in the living room. One full shelf is Judith McNaught, another shelf is John Saul. The rest are just misc. others that I like, in alphabetical order.

 

[Recidiva]

I think that I must not be a real reader/writer. I can fit all of my books into one room. There's just the two floor-to-ceiling shelves, plus of course the other two that occupy the entire closet, plus the rolling bookcart by my writing chair.

That's absolutely it, other than the books stacked under the shelves, of course. And next to the shelves. And sideways on top of the already shelved books. And in the guest bedroom. And the hundred-odd in the wonderful bookshelf coffee table in the living room - those aren't "my" books per se. The ones in the bathrooms, master bedroom, and kitchen are merely transient nomadic texts of undiscernable ownership. The ones stacked in the dining room are ... dining, I presume. I haven't asked them lately.

I have...so many...

But they're reference, there are only a few bookcases for stuff that must be within easy reach, touchstone books.

Otherwise I have so many books on so many subjects, my husband and daughter make fun of me because on any subject I always say "I have a book about that and..." - I don't say that any more.

I can't let books go either, because there's almost always a sentence or two I want to find in them, and if I let them go I can't madly leaf through it until I find the exact wording...

The only books I have on display separately for guests (not in my bedroom or bedroom closet...) are on the coffee table - "Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature" "Yo Meow Ma - A Spiritual Guide from The Ancient Chinese Philosopher Cat" and "Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book"

These three books give people entering the house and paying attention, insight to the demented person hosting them.

 

[champagne1982]

I only keep reference books, beloved books and books I haven't read yet. The rest go to the library where they sell them at a fraction of the price and use the money to (hopefully) finance the purchase of more bookshelves.

I only love a few books and a well thought out reference section means that sometimes, I even have <gasp> an empty shelf.

 

[oggbashan]

Expansion

1. I put extensive bookshelving on the walls of the living room.

2. I put extensive bookshelving on the walls of the breakfast room.

3. I put extensive bookshelving on the walls of the dining room.

4. I put extensive bookshelving on the walls of all five bedrooms.

5. I put extensive bookshelving in the hall.

6. I put extensive bookshelving on the landing.

7. I put extensive bookshelving on the walls of the toilet.

8. On sunny Sundays I put books for sale on the front garden wall.

9. I lent a thousand books to a nephew who was studing "Victorian Novelists". (After three years he returned them all. But their space had been filled. )

10. I opened a secondhand bookshop.

11. After nearly ten years of trading my home collection was larger than it had been before I started selling books.

12. I gave seven tonnes of books to a charity that sells them on trestle tables outside their coffee shop.

13. I gave books to those who attended Lit's Yorkshire meet.

14. I moved to a smaller house.

15. I am still giving books away to the charity. (See 12 above. Their customers also brought books back when then had read them, plus more books. They now have much MORE than the seven tonnes I gave then. They held annual book fairs selling five or six thousand books in a weekend. That publicised the fact that they sold books so MORE books were given to them. Each book fair eventually results in an increase in their stock.)

My conclusion: Given the right environment and a sympathetic owner - books breed like rabbits on Viagra.

Og