Due to the collapsed ceiling, have spend most of the weekend dusting down hundreds of books and records. The vinyl has simply gone into the cupboard under the stairs. The books however, needed to be sorted. This has enabled me to group books together for the first time in ages. When our local second hand bookshop recently closed I bought some of the bookcases and I now, for the first time in a long time, have sufficient shelf space.

The task of categorisation is by no means anywhere nearly over but a number of subject areas have emerged

History and traditions of the International Socialists -

- Cliff, Hallas, Harris, Widgery

Marxist theory

- Marx, Engels, Colleti, Luxemburg, Marcuse

I’ve put Marcuse next to Widgery as I think the latter would appreciate this.

Century of Books

- all the books I can find set in London and written between 1900 - 2000

History of technology

Natural History

History of the British working class

History of the Russian Revolution

History of Eastern Europe

There are a number of problems however, not least the different sizes of space between shelfs. This means that it’s slightly more complicated to fit everything into pre-assigned categories. Some of the Russian Revolution is one set of book cases, and another part is in the front room, simply because the shelfs there are much bigger and can accomodate things like Trotsky’s Three Volume History, Sukhanov’s Memoirs and Chamberlain’s two volume history. The volumes of E.H.Carr’s history are small enough to go on the smallest shelfs.

Well, this is certianly something that you don’t have to think about when categorising electronic files and books. But hey, paper ones really are much more aesthetically pleasing.