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September 7, 2014

Retrospect #36: September 7th

September 7, 2014

Retrospect #36 - Colour coordinated bookshelf square

In My Life

As you can see in the above photos, I rearranged some of my books. I share an IKEA Expedit 5-by-5 bookcase (that IKEA sadly discontinued earlier this year). Since I own way more books than my sister does, she has 10 pigeon holes while I have 15. A good number of those are used for school books, music scores, old children’s books, board games etc. I love how there’s enough space to double-stack books, such that I can tuck away books I won’t be reading in the foreseeable future.

Anyway, space permitting, I decided to sort my English fiction books according to colour. While I don’t think it’s practical to do this for all the books I own, I thought it’d be a fun little project to do it with one section of the bookcase and this is the result. It looks so inviting on the shelf now, I don’t think I can bear going back to sorting according to author.

On the Blog

Reviews
  • [3 Sep] THE XX FACTOR by Alison Wolf ★★★★
  • [6 Sep] THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US by Kasie West ★★★★½
Blog Posts
  • [4 Sep] Book Cover Culture #4: Every Day
  • [5 Sep] A Basic Guide to Managing TBR Piles

Around the Blogosphere

Bloggers & Blogging
  • Cait @ Notebook Sisters wonders how everyone keeps up with all the blogs.
  • Sandra @ Tea Between Books shares her tips for starting a book blog.
Covers
  • Cee @ The Novel Hermit takes a look at book covers featuring shoes.
Rating & Reviewing
  • Ashley @ Nose Graze noticed the emergence of advanced samples in place of advanced review copies. Personally, I have no desire to read samples of books that haven’t been published yet. I hardly ever do that for published books either because when I do get the whole book, I’m bound to start at the beginning again. Such a wast of my time to re-read the beginning.
Reading
  • Shannelle @ The Art of Escapism declares that there are more important things than the Goodreads reading challenge. If you’re behind on your goal, it doesn’t make you a lesser reader. Too true.
Social Media
  • Rachel @ Parajunkee outlines blogging social etiquette for the uninitiated.

Quote of the Week

The following is the story of my young life as I remember it. It is the truth as I know it. Of the stories and the myths that surrounded my family and my life—some of them thoughtfully scattered by you perhaps—let it be said that, in the end, I found all of them to be strangely, even beautifully true.

—Ava Lavender, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton

We often seek truth as something that is absolute, failing to realize that truth, more often than not, is relative. If we spend our lives trying to ascertain everything we’re told is true, I don’t think we’d ever start to live our lives. This is why I love this snippet from the prologue. It tells us how Ava will present her story in the following pages, reminding us that her storytelling is limited by what she knows.


How do you arrange your bookshelf? And how often do you switch things up and rearrange your books in a different manner?
There is so much information that I come across each day, I sometimes find it hard to process it all. This is why I decided to post a weekly recap post of what’s been going on here on my blog and with me in general, in the blogosphere and also about books as a whole. Retrospect has been inspired by none other than the lovely Asti @ Oh, the Books! when she used to do her weekly Bookish Recaps on her original blog, A Bookish Heart.

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Comments

  1. Sophie says

    September 14, 2014 at 00:30

    OMG, I love love LOVE Ikea’s Expedit line (and now the Kallax line too!), and your books look so pretty organized by color! I’m now contemplating doing the same thing because of your post, haha. :P

    And the Ava quote is really thought-provoking; story-telling is never 100% objective, but that’s the beauty of opinions and human thoughts, right?

    • Joséphine says

      September 15, 2014 at 20:26

      Hehe. They’re so flexible and fit into practically any type of apartment/house, which makes them wonderful! Though I like the Expedit shelves better because of the thicker frame. Makes them look more distinctive than the Kallax shelves. And do it! I love looking at the colour-coordinated books. Although, it’s not a practical shelving system for larger book collection. Lol.

      Yep. Everyone has a different story to tell, even if the events are the same :)

  2. Cait @ Notebook Sisters says

    September 11, 2014 at 16:22

    I’m just popping by from Oh The Books where Asti mentioned your blog in a post…and, omg my bookshelf is like THE SAME as yours! Except mine is 16 cubes. But it’s from Ikea and it looks like it’s that exact colour. Heh. Bookshelfish twins! *hi fives shyly* And then you also linked to my post?! And…oh gosh. THANK YOU! I feel so special right now. Hehe. XD

    • Joséphine says

      September 15, 2014 at 20:21

      Yay! Cait’s a happy bookshelf twin ;) It’s a lovely shelf, isn’t it? :D Except sometimes it’s difficult to fit books in precisely because a book need to be thicker or thinner to another book or to fill up gaps. Sigh.

  3. Jade @ Bits & Bobs says

    September 8, 2014 at 21:28

    I LOVE colourful bookshelves… When I own an abundance of books – I have a nice neat collection currently – I’d love to do something like that. My favourites are the blue and stack of red-ish one’s.
    :-)

    • Joséphine says

      September 15, 2014 at 20:16

      I love looking at colour-coordinated bookshelves too :) But I don’t think it’s a very practical shelving method for an entire bookshelf. I’d go mad hunting down that “rosier shade of pink” book or the ” bluer than blue sky blue” book. HAHA.

  4. Jess @myreadingdress says

    September 8, 2014 at 16:26

    Your bookshelf is so pretty *_* I wish I had the patience to sort mine like that! To be honest, my go to organisational method is now simply to squish the book in where there is room. And now there’s no more room for even that. So I resulted to keeping this trunk in my room–except now that’s full too. So I happily pile my books on the floor while I try to scramble for time to hit ikea :D

    • Joséphine says

      September 15, 2014 at 20:14

      I took out most of those books to take a photo for my post on managing TBR piles. Since they happened to be sacked on the floor, I took the opportunity to sort them accruing to colour and noticed that I could separate them fairly well into the pigeon holes. I doubt I would’ve taken them out to rearrange just for the sake of it. Lol. In the past I sorted according to size, then transitioned to sorting according to author.

      Ooh! When you do get your new IKEA shelf, you can use that time to rearrange if you’re so inclined ;)

About

Joséphine. Word reveller. Loves books. Reads books. Talks about books. Photographs books. When she’s not blogging, she can be found on Instagram under @wordrevel.

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