A The Problem with My Books
Might Yi-Chuan not have understood that I meant her to alphabetize my books, not library books? I scanned the shelves. They made no sense. I cleaned my glasses. ?These books are totally unordered!? I finally exclaimed to Hui-wen.
She figured it out and offered, ?No, they are ordered — by title!? While I know fifty percent of the authors of my books, for the titles I know at most some key words. But worse, my books were also ordered right-to-left. Even worse, titles like ?A Natural History of Rape? sometimes followed ?Artful Scribbles.? ?The Society of Mind? kept company with ?The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.? I would have to not only know the book?s title, but whether the first word was ?A? or ?The.? But if the jacket artist had not made ?A? or ?The? prominent, the book might still be filed under the first content word.
(That?s an excerpt from the article ?A The Problem with My Books,? By Catherine Caldwell-Harris, published in AIR 14:1.)