Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/25/categorize-your-bookshelves-by-emotions.html
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I’m fairly sure that I would hate it. I can cope with field / dewey decimal but when it comes to fiction I’d prefer it to just be alphabetical by author. I’d rather not have to figure out what mood the proprietor considers appropriate if I’m looking for something in particular.
It’s annoying to have to search the rock, heavy rock, progressive rock, classic rock sections of record stores only to find that they’ve got a psychedelic section that they think all the Hawkwind albums should live under. Book stores tend to be less obsessed with arbitrary categories although sections for science fiction, crime and romance are common. Once you are looking at a sorting by a strangers feelings about novels it may as well be an unsorted mess.
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My library is sorted by odour; from Musty to Fresh.
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I had a manager who color sorted our book section (my merchandising area). As a painter he was very proud of it and expected us all to be equally delighted. As a selling work area it was a f**king nightmare. I think when he spent twenty minutes finding a book for a customer he realized how stupid it was.
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When I was in high school I used to work lunches trying to implement order on the thousands of books that had been donated to the newly built school four or five years earlier.
One of my colleagues with whom I had a mutual dislike, colour-coded his section resulting in much consternation and hilarity.
That guy went on to be a cop. I often think about that.
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It’s a nice idea, but isn’t there a considerable number of books that cannot be categorized by mood?
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I don’t think this is supposed to help those that look for a specific book but rather those that are trying to discover new literature. As such I would find it helpful because the alphabetical order in a normal bookstore doesn’t help with that at all.
If you are looking for a specific book I am sure you could ask for it at the counter and they could tell you where to find it.
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They just go into the “eh, I’m not really sure what I’m feeling” section.
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Filed somewhere between “MEH” and “WTF”?
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I tried something like this in my own library for a little while. It was a nightmare, because so many books conjure different emotions in different moments. If it was too hard to arrange my own books for the moods of a household, I can’t imagine doing it for the general public. It was less successful than the unsorted library, by color, subject, or alphabetic.
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