Comment by NoboruWataya
3 days ago
And let's be honest, a good book collection is a great addition to a room, aesthetically. People tend not to talk about that aspect, I think they worry about being seen as pretentious showing off their books. But I think a book collection can be a great decoration, just as flowers or a painting can be.
And if you have family or friends over and one of them sees something they like, you can lend it to them there and then (if you are so inclined). Some of my earliest reading-related memories are being in an uncle's or neighbour's house and being fascinated by a book on a shelf that they kindly let me take home to read.
I actually made the opposite experience. Books nowadays have so many different format and colors, it’s really hard to make it esthetically pleasing, I have multiple walls full of books and they look like a mess, I dislike it.
Even if I could make it look nice, it would then be an intellectual mess, it wouldn’t be organised properly, I would struggle to find anything.
Actually, good question, how do you people organise your books? (Full disclosure, I’m messy)
Learn French and then you can have a wall of books with white spines.
I organize them by the color, either rainbow-style or from darker to brighter.
> it wouldn’t be organised properly, I would struggle to find anything.
Libraries solve this with the Dewey Decimal Classification. Most people don't have enough books for it make sense though.
For me, I don't have that many paper books and the ones I own I know by the side and the color. I keep the books that I reference often in a separate place. I noticed I don't need to find all of the books, all of the time. So organize most of your books to look pretty.
You can also group similar books together on a single shelf and then order them by color. For example I have a dozen of cookbooks and those go on a separate shelf, arranged in a rainbow. I also have a book series that goes neatly together, so I keep them it grouped too.
I also organize my clothes like that too. By general category first (t-shirts, pants, socks, jackets), and then by color.
I used to be extremely messy too (piles of clothes and documents, cardboard boxes, you know the deal). I turned it around after I read the Marie Kondo book "The life-changing Magic of Tidying up". Then after I got the mess under control I look at the pictures for inspiration how to make it aesthetically pleasing. I got a lot of ideas from Pinterest (I know, I know), but you can do an image search or check the organization subreddits too.
Organizing books by colour, couldn't resist the link to Two Ronnies :) https://youtu.be/AYxmPHLU9oA?si=n8OACTqPyZ12oWeA
Put them backwards in the shelves – now everything is calm and paper-coloured.
Doesn't that make it exceedingly hard to locate specific books?
One thing I have notices about modern books is that they are a freaking huge. I have a large number of novels from the 1970s. Their are all 250 - 400 pages, about the the same as my wife's moderns books about people getting murdered. The 50 year old books are less than half the size. Why is there a need to make modern books into tomes?
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And they improve room acoustics a decent amount, making the space that much more pleasant.
Are books like a natural version of those fancy futuristic sound panels in recording studios?
Yeah, diffusers. Smears first reflection time. Probably some low end absorbtion too.
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While I agree with the sentiment, I have hesitation in letting people see what I read.
In a way, you're letting people see the nature of things that you read - from which they might glean the nature of your thoughts, and privacy is something we all value. For that reason (and since I don't have any particular sentimental value for books, only their contents) I've long since preferred a digital library. As a minimalist, having a single Kindle on the table is aesthetics enough for me, which is complementary of the minimalist viewpoint as well.
However, I completely agree with the fact that having a physical library is a very conducive environment for kids to grow up with. I remember fun memories of my childhood reading from the home library, and thinking how pretty and colourful the shelves were too. But I think there should be a distinction between cultivating a library for your kids, versus that for the observation and assessment of strangers.
That, to me, is closer to a policy of isolation than privacy, which sounds unhealthy to me, unless maybe you're some kind professional spy or military strategist. Privacy is good; so are water and salt. We also value connection.
Minimalism is secretly about maximizing something, perhaps empty space and silence, or perhaps something else that you love.
Finally, life is layered on as we live it - that kid is still in there somewhere ;)
I'm not trying to prescribe necessarily, just giving a different point of view.
> While I agree with the sentiment, I have hesitation in letting people see what I read.
Woah there. Nobody* is showing off their playboy collection either. The visible bookshelf is just what you want others to see. You don’t even have to read those books. It’s like your Facebook wall - a facade of yourself.
* of course there are people proud of their playboy collection and showing it off
Do you not have human conversations with your friends and family? That's also a way for them to learn about you.
I like your view in this because it's just so different than anything I've thought before. Having books in common areas sparks conversation, real, substantive conversation with family, friends, and acquaintances. It's one of my favorite things to talk about at get togethers.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I share what I read, but only with very close friends. I'm hesitant to lend books out -- people are not great at returning them (partly my fault, I'm also bad at tracking the loans). I also have a hard time finding my books, as I live in a very small house (bookshelves are out of the question, it's numbered bins).
I am also wary of most of the cloud services in this domain.
So I wrote a little software to manage the situation -- just a simple CRUD thing that lets me manage a small personal library, or a small shared library between friends. It's not a "social network for books" or something grand like that. Just a simple self-hosted thing with minimal system requirements. There were some existing solutions, but none that really felt right.
It's published (open source) and has a few users, but I don't think I'll be able to manage it, if it receives a giant burst of attention. On github it's called 'ubiblio'. Perhaps I'll be ready to share it more generally in a few months.
Not sure if it's useful to you, but I hope it is!
Amazon through the kindle is storing massive amounts of data about your reading habits. Statistically, and inevitably, this information will be used against your best interests.
Maybe simply to sell you something you don’t need, to price up your insurance, or as a layup to a precrime you have yet to commit.
If reading privacy matter a kindle isn’t it. Imho.
To me “minimalism” is just a poor excuse for bad design and aesthetic sense, like dressing all black or white to avoid color coordination. It’s easy, but totally devoid of personality and expression.
>from which they might glean the nature of your thoughts, and privacy is something we all value.
I mean you let them into your house, privacy kinda goes out the window when you do that. You can always put books you don't want people to know you read in your bedroom or something.
> I have hesitation in letting people see what I read [...] privacy is something we all value.
Other people are replying to you acting like this is strange, but it's actually something normal people do all the time.
Every politician being interviewed from their home for TV news, every professor recording video lectures, every remote working CEO, and every twitch streamer has considered what is on display behind them.
If I choose shelves as my background, do I want eagle-eyed viewers to see my copies of playboy, my figurines of naked anime ladies, and my copies of the communist manifesto and mein kampf? As a matter of fact I don't.
I get that sentiment, it's not like I would put everything on display indiscriminately.
However, a statement like this "they might glean the nature of your thoughts", strikes me as .. lonely, if nothing else. I want privacy from Facebook and the general public, etc. But people that I invite into my house are people I am going to have conversations with and I want them to know the "real me", whatever that means, or at least a closer approximation of it. I certainly wouldn't want them to think that my political beliefs are something completely different from what they actually are.
How do you get along with communicating to others?
>In a way, you're letting people see the nature of things that you read - from which they might glean the nature of your thoughts
Nobody cares what you think. But if there are state-sponsored actors that do, they have way more insight into your life than the _nature of things that you read_ from physical texts you own. Digital library gives off a much resonant footprint in this regard.
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It’s a window into your interests, personality
Sure, but so is every interaction with me. Surely the friends you've just invited into your home are already privy to much of this info?