FILLING NON-EXISTENT GAPS ON BOOKSHELVES AND ORPHAN-RESCUE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Once every thousand million years or so – I’m under-exaggerating – I thoroughly check the bookshelves for non-existent gaps. And I also check for misplaced books in an unbalanced run of volumes. Orphans feature in this narrative. What the hell does any of that mean?
   It means my writerly library of physical books is stacked according to size and not going by the alphabet. Books go where they fit. You do your very best to keep a series on one shelf. And, in the time-honoured fashion, the first book in a series sits on the right of the shelf at the start of that series.
   So you can pick up a few books at a time, in reading order, of course. Reading order when you sit them down on a table, that is. Top to bottom and first to last.
   But…
   As Mercurial time passes, errors in this perfect system sneak in. You read the latest book in a series and set it down on a shelf. Any shelf will do. You are in a great hurry to save a pizza, and will fix all that book stuff later. No. You’ve created an orphan. Having finished the book, you move on to another tale. And the orphan remains lost in the tall trees. Okay, other books. They are trees.
   Books are trees by another name. Informative trees. Books are informative trees. A thousand million years passed by this week, and it was time to organise things I believed were already organised. Just triple double-checking.
   I started hunting out obvious candidates. Round up the usual suspects. You know the drill. That stray Dashiell Hammett volume that skipped town to commit murder in the dark. Reunite that bad boy with the other gangsters. One last heist. That always ends well.
   On my quest to discover misplaced tomes, I stumbled across a video recommended to me by Doctor Google. This was a video on decluttering. There are loads of ways to throw things out. Fifty ways to leave your bookcase…for recycling or demolition. What is the rule of 5 decluttering? Or the 12 12 12 rule? What is the 333 rule? Or the 20 20 rule. What is the 90 90 rule? Or the rule of 9…rings for mortal men. Doomed to die.
   What the fuck is Scandinavian Death Cleaning? Is it a band, and have any of the members been arrested for setting fire to churches? Is it Norwegian Death Cleaning, and is that the same as Swedish Death Cleaning?
   I saved time by not investigating the different rules of decluttering. On with the decluttering video, at double speed. Skipping the slow parts.
   An American woman told me she decluttered her house by no longer purchasing high heels or tampons. I somehow dimly suspected I was not the target audience of her particular video, and that the advice would prove useless in the extreme. There is no need to keep physical copies of movies, now that streaming services are so popular and versatile. Right?
   What of the other videos recommended next to this one? Same look to almost all of them. An American woman would warn me about the clutter of high heels, tampons, and movie discs in assorted formats and containers. But one video stood out.
   Another woman warned me not to abandon physical media. She was stockpiling movie discs to see her through the nuclear apocalypse. I stared at my bookshelves. My mission wasn’t to declutter anything. In the Digital Age, it was still important to me to keep all these physical books in some lunatic semblance of order. After all, they were bought and paid for.
   The declutterers of this world would accuse me of shuffling deck-chairs on the Titanic. That lone Hammett volume must shift from this bookcase to that bookcase. Orphan-rescue. And there’ll be adjustments along the way. No shelf is jam-packed so tight that you can’t get a book back out.
   Most shelves have a bit of wiggle-room to see them through. Books are stacked on top of each other when the shelf is half-empty. That’s now a mid-shelf bookend, to stop the rest of the books falling into the gap from the crater edges. Gradually, gaps fill. But there are also non-existent gaps…
   Damn it. There are two books in a series. I wonder if that writer scribbled any more? (Checks internet notes.) Damn it, there are another eight in the series. Now I must create a non-existent gap. Books in a series go together, if they can all fit on the shelf.
   Adjustments along the way. I don’t think I have a bookcase with fixed shelves. That’s insanity. A fixed mid-level shelf for stability, yes. It’s time to play the sub-game of Spreadsheet Purchasing Bingo and resetting adjustable shelves. Height is a factor. Width of a book is important. But height is your main enemy.
   I see those two books, and raise you the other eight. Spreadsheet Bingo. Wait. The paperbacks are all expensive. I can buy all the hardbacks for a third of the price? What sorcery is this?! Hey, I’ll take it. Luckily, there’s an old dodge here.
   The top of the bookcase is a shelf unto itself. One side is rammed against the wall. And I have a bookend that’ll hold the other side in place. This is a non-existent gap. I relocate two authors from crowded areas elsewhere. They take up a bit of space. Some books are now lying flat on the top of this lofty structure.
   Time to fill the non-existent gap. Buy these three books for one author’s series. Now order those hardbacks. But remember to buy that book from the one cheap place online. The volumes arrive in separate bags over the course of the week. Bingo! We have a full shelf.
   The dodge of using the top of the bookcase? That ignores height. I don’t have to adjust any shelves to take account of the taller hardbacks mixed in with diminutive paperbacks. It’s just you, me, and the ceiling, sport. I use the bibliography page of a writer’s Wikipedia entry to make sure these non-existent gaps are filled in the right reading order.
   Proper, right, chronological reading order. Hmm. This works for most writers and their books. Some of them go back and write prequels or interludes between tales at a later date. The reading order of Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories is guided by the rule of Chaos. And who is to say that’s a bad thing?
   You can read The Chronicles of Narnia in any order you please. Just be sure to read the last one last. C.S. Lewis has no say in that, of course. But read the last one last. To re-read that series now, I’d most likely start with The Magician’s Nephew.
   Reading order brings me, rather messily, to that other matter: misplaced books in an unbalanced run of volumes. What the hell is that? It’s about making adjustments. This stretch of books must move to a new shelf or a new bookcase or even across the hall into another room full of more bookcases.
   If I abandoned physical media, I’d declutter my library so heavily that the floor would spring back up once the obsolete bookcases were removed from those overburdened floorboards. Can’t have that. Empty rooms, easy to navigate across in a straight line, are no fun. Beware them.
   Yes, I juggle books. That’s what this is about. I pick up a row of books sandwiched between outstretched hands on outstretched arms. And I mostly manage to carry those from the old shelf to the new shelf. Occasionally, there’s an accident. Collapse. I pick the books up and stack them in the same order. Or so I think. I’ve unknowingly created orphans in the otherwise orderly pile.
   Lone Wolf and Cub. Yes, I know. The series is NUMBERED. I didn’t drop any while moving them. I sat the stories down on a table in stacks and then put one stack in the wrong order. A quick glance at the result showed enough numbered copies in the right order to fool the eye with a devious optical delusion.
   Anyway, I am on the hunt. And I spot stuff like that. Until next time, of course.
   Orphans. Books divorced from a series. Jumbled reading order. Sometimes that’s down to the original author. Realising a writer went on to write more books? Now I have non-existent gaps to fill. And, possibly, shelves to adjust as I make books fit in.
   There’s no decluttering here. Not if I am completing a series and creating a gap in a shelf to fill it. Instead of decluttering – throwing things out or giving them away – I am maximising the space on those bookshelves. A quick poll shows that the top of almost every bookcase is a shelf that holds even more books.
   Here, there, for technical reasons, this is not true. I have to be able to reach light switches. Do I really, though? No. Bookcases block light. That’s why there are so many extra lamps providing illumination from floor switches. The floor switches that aren’t blocked off by bookcases, that is.