I cannot find my copy of Le Fanu’s The Rose and the Key.
If you have read this mediocre novel, you will wonder why on earth I’m looking for it. My own reaction a decade ago was: “A 400-page poorly-plotted Gothic.” Well, even though it is bound to be disappointing, I am a mad Le Fanu fan. Uncle Silas is my favorite Gothic novel, and so I want to reread The Rose and the Key.
Our books used to be well-organized, even catalogued, but then we had a black mold scare in the study. We packed up our books so the de-molding crew could do its thing, which seemed to be painting the walls. (N.B. The CDC website says there is no black mold menace. All houses have mold, and no link has been proved between black mold and any diseases.)
Well, some of our books are still packed in boxes, so I decided to reorganize them. Our library is so huge that I am doing them bookcase by bookcase, alphabetized by author. Each bookcase has its own A-Z shelves.
Here are some messy stacks on the floor. I wonder if I will ever reread George Meredith’s Evan Harrington.
All right, they’re shelved now. Here is a partial photo of the front of two reorganized double-stacked shelves in one bookcase. Curiously, I have read almost all of them, but I don’t feel the urge to weed these (mostly) classics.
Well, we’re not ready to go on Booktube with this look. Booktubers have spare, tastefully-ordered, often white-painted bookcases. Their books often match! I should do this by color code.
But I didn’t find my copy of The Rose and the Key. Very sad. And reading the e-book is just not the same.
mirabile dictu 
Ohh lovely – I do like to see pictures of other people’s shelves! Sometimes you just have to have a tidy – I usually don’t find what I’ve been searching for but instead something just as interesting that I’ve forgotten about!
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That is the case here: some of these books I haven’t looked at in years!
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Frustrating when you can’t find the book you really want to read. I read The Rose and the Key many years ago and really can’t remember it. I don’t even remember if it was good or terrible. Perhaps the latter judging by what you say. I agree Uncle Silas is excellent though.
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Yes, Uncle Silas is his best. But where did my blue Dover of The Rose and the Key wander, I wonder!
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You have an interesting shelving method, alphabetically by bookcase. I like that. And your shelves look perfectly fine.
You’re a woman after my own heart, checking with the CDC about black mold. A woman chided me for feeding squirrels in a public part, said someone had been bitten, and that we’d all get rabies. I checked with my veterinarian friend and confirmed with the CDC that any mammal can transmit rabies but some are more likely to than others. There have been zero reported cases of rabies transmitted from squirrels to humans. In fact, unlike cats (of which we now have a new one), squirrels have very clean mouths and bites from them almost never get infected, as I can attest (don’t ask).
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Oh, a new cat! Yay!
Yes, there are a lot of unwarranted fears out there. I admit I’m not fond of raccoons. When I first saw one, I thought, Wow, it’s not in a Disney movie, and it’s enormous. But squirrels live among us!
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I agree with your system; if you organise by colour you’d have to remember the name of the author, the title of the book and the colour! In case you’re interested, mine are sorted by country and author, so all Russians are together, all Dutch, all English, American and Finnish, subdivided alphabetically by author, and that means that Tolstoy’s biography is in the Tolstoy section 😊
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I do like your system. It would be convenient to have all the Russians together, instead of scattered around by author. Perhaps one day I’ll get around to organizing all the bookcases as one big library, but it gives me a headache to think of all the work involved!
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Haha, yes, it is a lot of work. I recently moved countries and did away with a lot of books. But the ones I took are now only half sorted. That is that the Russians are in a bookcase, and the rest is still piled up. I intend to make a study in my new house, but I still have to think of a good system. A big library would be ideal 😄
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The Russians are the most important to you! (That reminds me, I’d better get back to the Russisans!) It is very tiring to figure out where to put the bookcases. My goal has been to get them out of the living room, ibecause the books inevitably pile up on the coffee table. Well, we really have nowhere else to put them. I’m thinking of moving out my grandmother’s trunk from the bedroom and substituting a tall bookcase!
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Very recognisable! No matter what, the books inevitably pile up. Here too there are piles of books in the living room, and in the bedroom. I was thinking that perhaps we need a special (small) shelf for new books and books that are being read? 😄
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Yes, that might solve the problem!
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Funny, I just reviewed Uncle Silas. I liked it, though with reservations. The Folio edition is gorgeous though!
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I loved it but I do look forward to your post. I haven’t fallen in love with any of his other books.
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