Unconventional Time Travel

Sherman, set the WABAC Machine to December 2010, when I read a couple of books about time travel.

HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE by Charles Yu is the third novel I read at the end of last year with a title that sounds like a self-help guide. More interestingly, it's a book about time travel, but in a world (a science fictional universe, actually) where the mechanism of moving through time is less scientific and more literary:

The base model TM-31 runs on state-of-the-art chronodiegetical technology: a six-cylinder grammar drive built on a quad-core physics engine, which features an applied temporalinguistics architecture allowing for free-form navigation within a rendered environment, such as, for instance, a story space and, in particular, a science fictional universe.

If, like me, you find this early paragraph enchanting and amusing, you're going to love this book. If it turns you off, you may not want to bother, because it's like that all the way through. HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE is more experimental meta-fiction than it is science fiction, and it's as much about the narrator's relationship with his immigrant parents as it is about time travel.

The narrator -- his name is also Charles Yu, but I believe this is only mentioned once, at the very beginning -- is a time machine repairman who leads an isolated life inside his machine and outside of time, except when he's called for a job. After an unfortunate encounter with his future self, he goes on a search for his missing father, a brilliant but unsuccessful inventor. The heartbreaking family story appears both in memory and in visits via the time machine, and the novel suggests that these methods aren't so different. As speculative science, it's shaky, but as a powerful story, it works.

For a longer taste of the novel's style and humor, read this excerpt from the first chapter. Don't be scared away if you're unfamiliar with the term "retconned". I think the rest of the sci-fi references in the book are widely known to a general audience, so it doesn't require any special knowledge to appreciate.

MEANWHILE by Jason Shiga is a graphic novel involving a time machine and some other dangerous inventions. The book is interactive -- the reader chooses the path of the story by following tubes from page to tabbed page. The mechanism is ingenious, mind-blowing, and hard to describe. Here's a video in which a fan demonstrates how the book works.

The book's structure alone makes it worth reading, but it also has an engaging story, or rather, a multitude of stories. Little Jimmy happens upon an inventor's lab and is encouraged to play with the inventions: a time machine, a mind-reading helmet, and the Killitron 2000. From there, things tend not to go very well. As the book's introduction warns, "Most [paths] will end in DOOM and DISASTER."

Shiga is also the author of the excellent BOOKHUNTER, a thrilling look at the work of library police. You can read many of his comics online at his site.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Laura Miller looks at the way contemporary novels avoid and embrace discussion of contemporary online life.

→ Don't be embarrassed. Everyone looks at Bookshelf Porn. (Thanks, NeilFred!)

Recommended Books on Writing

I'm working on a follow-up column to the one I posted Tuesday, looking at dialogue again but this time focusing on what the characters say. As I was making a list of all the common problems that result in not-so-great dialogue, it occurred to me that my first novel contained every one of these rookie mistakes. And I'm of the opinion that dialogue has always been my strongest writing skill.

It's nice to be reminded that I've made appreciable progress as a writer since I started that first novel almost ten years ago. I've improved because of all the time I've spent writing, receiving feedback from excellent critiquers, rewriting, and studying the fiction I read. I have also learned from explicit writing advice that I've received from books, presenters, and blog posts. I don't know how many times I've read an analysis of some element of fiction and gone, "Oh! Yes! That's exactly why I haven't been able to get that scene to work!" No matter how much I learn through my own writing experience, I never stop benefiting from the intelligent guidance of other people who've thought hard about writing.

In last night's #writersroad Twitter chat, we discussed books on writing, so I thought I'd recommend my favorites here:

→ SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS by Renni Browne and Dave King - Every chapter of this book was eye-opening for me. It's a great place to start if you don't know how to approach your manuscript critically so that you can start revising. It's a funny book, too.

→ SAVE THE CAT! by Blake Snyder - Even though this book is about screenwriting, it's widely recommended among novelists. I didn't understand how to construct a plot until I read this book, and if you're in the same position I was, I recommend giving it a try.

→ THE FIRE IN FICTION by Donald Maass - Maass has fantastic ideas about how to take your story and ramp up everything: increase the tension, raise the stakes, make the reader care more about your characters. I've used so many of his techniques to make my manuscripts work better.

→ DEEPENING FICTION by Sarah Stone and Ron Nyren - This was the textbook for the class I took with the Stanford Continuing Studies Online Writer's Studio. It's a pretty expensive book, but it contains a huge amount of writing discussion, a small anthology of short stories by noted writers, and analyses of these stories to illustrate the discussions. The book is aimed at intermediate and advanced writers, and I appreciated that focus and the amount of attention given to revision. Highly recommended if you want to do some self-study to strengthen your writing.

→ HOW NOT TO WRITE A NOVEL by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman - This book is hilarious. It's also embarrassing, because you will realize just how many of the mistakes you've made in your own writing. After you've laughed at the wonderfully painful examples of what not to do, you'll be sure not to make the same errors again.

→ STEERING THE CRAFT by Ursula K. Le Guin - My writing group worked through this book many years ago. Le Guin's presentation of the elements of fiction is smart and unconventional. I'm usually uninspired by the writing exercises in books, but I enjoyed doing these and liked many of the short pieces I produced.

→ READING LIKE A WRITER by Francine Prose - Novelist Prose examines passages by renowned authors and explores what makes them effective. This book reminded me how poorly read I am in the classics, and I once again resolved to do something about that and then didn't.

→ THE POWER OF POINT OF VIEW by Alicia Rasley - It was so exciting for me to read a book by someone who is more geeky about POV than I am, because most writing guides don't cover the topic in nearly enough depth. Rasley analyzes each possible narrative perspective and discusses when it might be appropriate for your story.

→ WRITING THE OTHER by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward - An exploration of the problems writers encounter when trying to write about people different than themselves and advice on doing it well and avoiding common mistakes. The focus is on race and culture, though other differences are discussed. The main problem with the book is that it's too short.

I guess I must read a lot of books on writing. I'm always eager to get recommendations for more writing guides worth reading.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Livia Blackburne thinks about The Blogification of Writing Tips, offering excellent reasons why you might want to read one of these books for some more in-depth advice than you'll find online.

→ At the Office of Letters and Light blog, Sarah Mackey writes about Books on the big screen.

Dialogue Tags and Beats

This post first appeared as the December "Write & Rewrite" column in WritersTalk, the newsletter of the South Bay Writers branch of the California Writers Club.

 

Dialogue is an important part of most stories, and one that many writers have trouble with. The core of any dialogue is the lines that the characters speak, but the words outside the quotation marks also matter, and there are many ways to wield them clumsily.

This sample dialogue demonstrates some common problems. (Note that one mistake not illustrated is incorrect formatting. The passage follows standard conventions for punctuating dialogue in American English. If you aren't familiar with these rules, take the time to learn them.)

"Margot!" Wesley bellowed. "You left the milk out again."

"I didn't," she objected grimly. "It must have been one of the children."

Wesley looked at her. "Couldn't have been. I put the milk back in the fridge just after they went out."

"So?" Margot stood up and got a glass of water. "Does it feel good to think you can prove me wrong?" she queried, looking over at Wesley.

"It's not only about how you never pick up after yourself. It's a health hazard," he snapped angrily.

"But skydiving, on the other hand, is perfectly safe," she responded sarcastically. "Every weekend, no risk at all."

"That's what you're angry about?" he queried in surprise.

"I'll put this away," Margot grimaced, taking the milk carton from him. "Wouldn't want us to be in any danger."

Let's start by considering the many verbs that appear in place of "said." While an occasional expressive verb such as "bellowed" might make a scene more vivid, it's usually better to save the interesting verbs for action, not dialogue tags. Alternatives to "said" draw attention away from the characters' conversation but rarely convey any information about the scene.

There are many ways to ruin a dialogue tag with a pointlessly creative verb. For example, it's redundant to use "objected" for Margot's objection. Instead of telling readers that Wesley "snapped," a more powerful tactic is to show it with the words he speaks. And I challenge anyone to demonstrate how Margot "grimaced" out that sentence. No matter how many times it's repeated, "said" is always an appropriate choice. Like the ubiquitous "the," "said" is a purely functional word that slips by unnoticed, so don't worry about overusing it.

Unread Count: Many

After I reorganized all my books, I intended to figure out how many of them I hadn't read. I was guessing that even after getting rid of a bunch of books that I admitted to myself I would never read, I had only read about half my collection, but I didn't really know. When The Book Roadie posted last week about her unread books, I remembered to make a count of my own.

I decided only to consider the fiction, because that's what mostly what I read and that's the fastest growing part of the collection. (See, I got rid of all those books last month, so I get to buy more, right?) This section currently has about 250 books (mainly novels, a few short story collections). Sure enough, my calculations show that I've read only a little over half of these, with some 115 books that I've never read.

I guess this is supposed to be a bad thing, something I should be embarrassed about. It's true that I do feel a little silly when a friend examines my shelves and asks about several books in a row that I have to confess to knowing nothing about. And I suppose Kyeli does have a point when she writes of her book buying ban, "The addition of new books is fun, alluring, tempting -- but not fulfilling. How can it be, when I just add them to a stack of others? I'm not getting anything out of the books, but I'm giving up space and money for them." Every time I buy a new book, or even borrow one from a friend or the library, a voice in my head asks me why I need this other book when I have so many perfectly good books still to read at home.

But you know what? I already have enough irrational guilt in my life. I'm taking a different perspective on these unread books: Hooray, I'm never going to run out of perfectly good books still to read at home! When the zombie apocalypse comes and I'm trapped in my house and there's no more internet to download from, I'll still have plenty of new books.

Or taking a different but more reality-based perspective: Nothing requires that a personal library be a record of books read. That might be what it is for some people, and maybe these are the same people who frequently take down old favorites for another read. I'm not much of a rereader, and while I held on to all the books that survived my culling because I believed I might look at them again, perhaps I should be justifying having so many read books in my collection. I've gotten what I wanted to out of these books, they're taking up space, and they could be providing value to somebody else. Any minute now, I'm going to start feeling guilty that I didn't give away all the books I've read.

Instead, I'll keep on gradually reading the unread books on my shelves and gradually acquiring more unread books, and I'll try to remain free of guilt about this particular issue. I'll save my energy for preparing for the zombie apocalypse.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Shannon Page writes about the problems of characters not behaving the way you intended: "You don't know the characters when you write the outline. I mean, you sort of do; you invent them, after all. But they're a paragraph from your imagination at that point. Now they are 400 pages of action and thoughts and crappy decisions and love and drama and *living*. They are alive and real, and they don't like being pushed around any better than the rest of us do."

→ Kevin Hartnett at The Millions resolves to stop blaming the Internet: "What I realized then is that the opposite of the Internet is not concentration. That morning I was indeed successful at staying off the Web, but so what? I fiddled with my pen, adjusted my socks, stared out the window, filled and refilled my water bottle, went to the bathroom. It turns out there are a lot of ways to fritter away time that don't involve a computer screen."

A Little Story About A Little Book

When I sorted through my book collection recently, I found I still owned a lot of books from college English classes that I hadn't necessarily read at the time and definitely hadn't thought about since. Certain of these books demonstrated a tendency among the creative writing instructors to assign books by writers connected to the creative writing program. I was unable to recollect any sentimental attachment to most of these books, so I put them in the giveaway pile.

I took one back out of the pile when I noticed the extensive underlining it contained. I don't remember reading this book, but either I did, or in an intense fit of boredom, I simply went through the pages madly underlining. In some sections there are more words underlined than not.

Optimism

It's an early January tradition to look at the year ahead and make proclamations about how we're going to live better or improve our circumstances before another year passes. And let's be honest here: It's also traditional for those resolutions to be the very same ones we failed at the year before.

So I make this bold statement with full awareness of just how many years in a row I've been saying it, but not too much shame about that fact: This is the year I'm going to make it.

For me, right now, "making it" means getting an agent, and then getting a book deal, and eventually (though this part is certainly more than a year away) having a book in print and for sale everywhere and -- why the hell not? -- on bestseller lists. I mean, if I'm going to think positively, I may as well think really positively, right?

Succeeding as a novelist, even when you count success as something more modest than bestseller status, takes a long time. Writing is slow and revising is slower, and novels have a lot of pages. It takes time to learn about how to get your work in front of publishing professionals and more time to actually do it, over and over again until you start getting somewhere. I don't imagine that any writer heads down the path of seeking publication without a full glass of optimism. It's far too much work to bother with if you don't believe you're going to make it.

I believe this is my year. December may prove me wrong, but I don't see any way to move forward except with optimism.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jason Black lays out how to establish your characters in a book's opening.

What I'll Be Reading

It's a new year, so it's time to come up with all sorts of wacky personal improvement schemes to hold ourselves to (and optionally fail at). One of my schemes is that at the beginning of each month, I'll pick four books that I plan to read during the month.

I'm not committing to finishing all four books by the end of the month (though I'll make an effort), so rolling over to the next month is allowed. What I do hope is to start all of the books close to the beginning of the month. I've discovered lately that I do more total reading when I'm working on multiple books at once, since at any potential reading time I can choose the subject and format that suits me best right then. With three or four books on the go, maybe I'll end up getting to read a few more of the books on my nearly infinite list.

My to-be-read picks for January:

→ RED MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - I started reading this book last month but am only 14% through (I'm reading the Kindle edition on my phone). Fascinating so far. The book is about the first human colony on Mars, and it was recommended by a couple of friends as being science fiction that focuses heavily on both the technology and the characters. I didn't even think about this before I started, but this book turns out to be an excellent follow-up to PACKING FOR MARS by Mary Roach, a hilarious and educational nonfiction book I read recently that discusses the unglamorous practicalities of putting people into space.

→ AURORARAMA by Jean-Christophe Valtat - I first heard about this book on the blog of Melville House, the publisher, and then it was mentioned on the Bookrageous podcast. The setting is "New Venice, the pearl of the Arctic," a city located close to the North Pole, and the era is Victorian. And notice that airship on the cover? Yup, this is steampunk (the Library of Congress subject heading on the copyright page even says so), or as I imagined everyone must be saying (but apparently few are), it's icepunk or snowpunk. I started reading yesterday and was drawn into the story right away. Plus I learned the excellent word "septentrional".

In further adventures of things I believe I don't like in books despite evidence to the contrary, when I learned from the front flap that AURORARAMA is "Episode One in an astonishing new series," I thought about not reading it after all. I have this idea that I don't like to read series. Astute readers will note that RED MARS is first in a series. Scarily psychic readers will note that this is in fact one of the qualities that drew me to Robinson's book. Really, my brain is a strange and confusing place. Please stay out.

→ THE CITY, NOT LONG AFTER by Pat Murphy - This is a post-apocalyptic story set in San Francisco, so I'd been planning to read it anyway. Then I found out that Pat Murphy will be one of the honored guests at the first FOGcon in March, so the book went to the top of the list. The Friends of Genre Convention (FOGcon) is a literary-themed science fiction and fantasy convention to be held March 11 through 13 in San Francisco. Will I see you there?

→ NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro - This is a reread for me of a book that I first read in 2007 and then recommended to everybody. I maintain that this is a book you should know nothing about going in. In particular, avoid the Library of Congress subject headings on the copyright page, which spoiled me the first time. On my previous read, I found both the narrative style and the premise brilliant, and I'll be interested to see how they hold up on a second read. I'm rereading now because a movie based on the book came out this fall, and I want to enjoy the book on its own again before checking out the movie.

In other January book news, I'm looking forward to the January 20 release of THE WEIRD SISTERS by my blog buddy Eleanor Brown. "A winsome novel that explores sibling rivalry, the power of books, and the places we decide to call home" -- sounds like a book I'll be reading in February!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Beck McDowell, guest posting at Pimp My Novel, is in a new reading threesome: "That’s right. From now on, it’ll be e-books, tree books, and me."

→ At Edittorrent, Theresa Stevens presents a rule for using coincidences in fiction: "If the coincidence creates a complication, it can remain in the plot. Otherwise, get rid of it."

How to Write a Novel About Novels

I've recently read two novels that on the surface have related premises. In HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST by Steve Hely, Pete sets out to write a best-selling novel by analyzing the New York Times Best Seller list and incorporating every element that seems to contribute to popularity. Improbably but hilariously, his scheme works, and THE TORNADO ASHES CLUB achieves success, though the consequences aren't quite what Pete had hoped for.

HOW TO BUY A LOVE OF READING by Tanya Egan Gibson also involves crafting a book to the tastes of an audience -- not the entire reading public, but a single teen girl. Carley's richy-rich parents believe there's something wrong with her because she's neither skinny nor Ivy League material. They decide that somehow the key to turning her life around is to make her into an enthusiastic reader by commissioning a novel written to her specifications (and in a single month -- November, as it happens).

Neither of these books were what I expected from the premise, and both were far better. When I first heard Hely discuss HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST on NPR, I laughed at the concept, but it also sounded a little too easy, a bit too one-joke to be worth actually reading. My humble apologies to Hely, and my sincere gratitude to the friend who pressed the book into my hands. (And also sorry to everyone within earshot who had to listen to me giggle my way through the book.)

The story of Pete's rise to fame is not, as I perhaps imagined, based on deciding that THE DA VINCI CODE sucks and quickly knocking out a better version. Pete finds that compared to thinking up an idea, "Writing a novel -- actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs -- is a tremendous pain in the ass." And he also discovers that to write a plot-focused page-turner requires even more effort, more than he wants to expend. Instead of worrying about intricate plotting, Pete writes a literary-type blockbuster full of engineered emotional moments, pointlessly flowery language, and a plot that makes no real sense. I appreciated that Hely went in this direction, because as much as I might enjoy mocking THE DA VINCI CODE, I am well aware that Dan Brown's books are popular not because they are so carefully written, but because they have plots stronger than I could ever hope to write.

But don't worry, this book still lets you enjoy mocking Dan Brown and everyone else who writes novels that sell better than yours. Pete's literary world is full of fictional but easily recognizable stand-ins like Tim Drew, whose works include THE DARWIN ENIGMA and THE BALTHAZAR TABLET. And Josh Holt Cready, "the precocious author of MANASSAS, a novel about a precocious author named Josh Holt Cready who retraces the steps of his ancestor who fought for the Union and died at Cold Harbor," if Schadenfoer is more your thing.

Throughout the book, we are treated to excerpts from Pete's novel and those of his competitors. These are spot-on parodies of their genres, and the humor isn't that the writing is bad (it's not) but that each excerpt is so exactly what that particular style is like. Kudos to Steve Hely for this difficult accomplishment, which must have taken a lot more work than Pete was willing to put in. If you have a familiarity with the kinds of books that sell these days and some skepticism over what makes the lists, read HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST and scare those around you with your outbursts of laughter.

HOW TO BUY A LOVE OF READING also spends some time on literary parody, with a bunch of discussion of meta-fiction and other amusing mentions such as "the just-released ANNIE GONE, a retelling of ANTIGONE through the eyes of a twelve-year-old trailer park denizen." But the book isn't really about the novel commission, even though that's what the title and description suggest. It's a story about a boy and a girl (with a secondary story about another boy and another girl), and it's about characters wrestling with issues that can't be fixed by literature. It's about the question of how many times people will forgive being hurt by the people they love.

Carley doesn't need a love of reading or anything that her parents can buy for her. She needs their attention, and if they'd only listen, they might find out she's a smart, caring person who isn't much interested in books because she has more pressing concerns. She'd really like to get some help for her best friend, because he has a serious substance abuse problem and equally inattentive parents.

I learned about this book when Tanya Egan Gibson came to my writing club to speak about world-building. I bought the book and read it because I liked her presentation, but I had no idea that I was going to find a story so much more complex and significant than the description reveals. I especially didn't suspect this novel to be practically what I would request if I were commissioning a novel. Sensitive but damaged male protagonist? Check. Kid characters? Check. Multiple perspectives, humor, texts within the text, narrative gimmicks, non-linearity... Some of these are even elements I didn't realize I'd include on my manifesto for a perfect novel. I'm not saying this is a perfect novel, but it does remarkably well at being exactly the sort of book I love to read. Since that mirrors the purported subject of the novel, I suspect Gibson of some sort of literary voodoo. If this is also the kind of book that enchants you, read HOW TO BUY A LOVE OF READING and fall in love.

What I've Been Doing Instead of Blogging

I haven't posted here in a couple of weeks. This is what I've been doing with myself in the meantime:

→ Staying off the internet for much of the day. I decided to disable my computer's wireless connection before bed each night and not turn it on until finishing the day's writing work. To my surprise, most days I haven't been particularly eager to get back online, and after writing, I move on to reading, housework, etc without stopping to look at Twitter, Facebook, and Google Reader. As a result, I've been more productive than usual in the non-internet world. As another result, I've only had time for "essential" online interactions, and I've regretted missing out on my normal levels of consumption and engagement. Such are the problems of our modern world (or not).

→ Engaging repeatedly in pointless turmoil that goes like this: I think of a brilliant blog post I'll write later that day and compose a few sentences in my head. I run out of time in the day for writing a blog post, due to accomplishing so many other productive tasks (or not). I tell myself I'll write the post the next day. The next day, I have lost all enthusiasm for the topic but have another brilliant idea. The cycle repeats. I do not write any blog post at all. I feel guilty about neglecting my blog and letting down my devoted readers. I berate myself for the narcissism of imagining that my readers, however devoted, are actually sitting around thinking about how I have let them down. I feel guilty about my narcissism. I feel narcissistic for posting about my guilt. I marvel at the fact that I do not yet have any posts tagged "guilt".

→ Thinking about patterns, habits, and cycles, both in my own life and in the lives of my characters. Despite my real or imagined narcissism, I far prefer to analyze these as they apply to my characters.

→ Making excellent progress on getting the story of my novel right by writing a synopsis. I'm sure this advice appears many places, but I know that in REVISION & SELF-EDITING by James Scott Bell, he recommends drafting a synopsis (or several) as a way to assess a story before revising. I've been writing what I expect will be about a 15-page document that lays out the plot of my novel -- not the plot as it exists, but as it should be. This has been a slow, extremely useful process that is forcing me to come up with answers to all the questions like "How did that result in him believing that?" and "Why wouldn't she have told him that years ago?" Once I'm done with the synopsis, the idea is that I'll know what I need to change in the next draft, and I'll have some confidence that those things won't need to be changed again. I keep feeling like it sure would have saved a lot of time if I had simply created this synopsis before ever writing the book in the first place, but I know I wouldn't have come up with most of this stuff without writing it a couple of times. It would be awfully nice to develop the skill of doing it in the other order, though.

→ Smiling at my reorganized book collection every time I walk down the hall.

→ Rewarding myself for getting rid of 150 books by -- yes, you guessed it! -- buying more books.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Paul Collins at Slate studies a Victorian writing guide and observes what the first how-to book for fiction can still tell us: "[Sherwin] Cody tells would-be Victorian writers to show and don't tell ('To say your heroine was proud and defiant is not half so effective as saying she tossed her head and stamped her foot'), to kill their darlings ('sacrifice absolutely everything of that sort'), and write what they know." (Thanks, Dick!)

→ Parker Peevyhouse at The Spectacle puzzles over When Writers Don’t Read: "Reading a chapter of someone else's book is like taking a shot of espresso -- it keeps me going. It puts me in the right frame of mind, like the author is sitting there with me waiting for me to jump in with my own story."

Sorting Out My Book Collection

Unsurprisingly, I own a lot of books. My collection isn't enormous, but it's large enough to present a storage problem. A growing storage problem, since a healthy book collection never stops growing.

At some point in the past, I had an appropriate number of shelves for the number of books, and the books were arranged on the shelves in a reasonable fashion. That point was perhaps four or five years ago. All books acquired since then ended up stacked in empty spaces at the ends of shelves, or on the floor, or on other nearby surfaces. I'd been meaning to do something about this problem for, well, four or five years.

This November, I didn't manage to write a novel, but NaNoWriMo did give me the motivation to finally reorganize my books. The First Annual Great NaNoWriMo Book Drive presented an opportunity to donate books I no longer wanted to Better World Books in support of reading and writing education. A chance to do good AND let someone else deal with my unwanted books? Count me in! (The book drive continues until December 15, so if you're also looking for a responsible way to get rid of books, I can help connect you with a bookdriver in your area.)

My local bookdriver-in-chief, The Book Roadie (aka Ealasaid Haas) recently posted a three-part series about organizing her library. My collection is smaller, so I didn't have to think as much about classification, but I roughly followed Ealasaid's technique for sorting and reshelving.