Wednesday 1 October 2008

The Musings Sorted Book Challenge

I am indebted - as I am so often - to Susan at Green Chair Press for this link to the official Sorted Books Project.

'The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library's holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.'

When you click on the photos on Nina Katchadourian's site, you will see the rest of the series from each 'sorting'.



And here is a not terrifically amusing one I've just come up with very quickly myself. I will put my mind to creating some better efforts this evening (because, with absolutely no cleaning, tidying, washing or ironing to do [cough, cough, cough], let alone manuscripts to be edited [further bout of ironic ahem-ing] of course I have just masses of time on my hands for playing amusing bookish games).


Why don't you see what your bookshelves can yield? If you post pics of the results on your blog, please leave a comment with link(s) below, and, if enough people join in, I'll put together a compilation of the best 'stories' here in a few weeks' time.

And we'll have a vote.

And I'll send a prize to the winner!

Yeah! Get to it!

18 comments:

monix said...

I've done a hasty one here: http://randomdistractions.blogspot.com/2008/10/sorting-books-as-challenge.html
I'll see what else I can find.

Anonymous said...

I should be cooking dinner - but this was much more fun. Here are two to throw into the ring:
http://60goingon16.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/10/sorted.html

Nan said...

I haven't done one... yet. But I've been thinking about it all day. What a cool one you did.

dougalfish said...

okay my first one is on http@//dougalfish.blogspot.com and my second is on http://thenaughtystep.blogspot.com/2008/10/where-do-babies-come-from.html

Thought I'd get some good ones with my OH's serial killers collection but it wasn't inspiring.

Anonymous said...

Oh, this looks kind of fun. I'm going to have a go tomorrow to see if I can come up with anything!

Jane Badger said...

Not brilliant, but here it is: http://booksandmud.blogspot.com/2008/10/sorted-books-challenge.html

LadyLuz said...

I should have been digging holes for the trees, but here's what I did instead http://mipieenmiboca.blogspot.com

I shall never look at my books in the same way again.

Magpie said...

http://www.magpiemusing.com/2008/10/no-really-i-was.html

It's irresistible.

Juliet said...

And here's another one: http://buenosburritos.blogspot.com/2008/10/title-waves.html

colleen said...

Sorted. Here http://www.rusinurbis.com/2008/10/sorted.html.

Thanks for the wheeze.

JRSM said...

Here's mine:

http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2008/10/sorted-books-project.html

Thanks for letting me know about this!

Juliet said...

Thanks everyone! Some lovely ones coming in. I've gone a weeny bit mad myself: http://julietdoyle.blogspot.com/search/label/Sorted%20Book%20Challenge

Juliet said...

Another one on Random Distractions here: http://randomdistractions.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-books-sorted_10.html

Juliet said...

And one from garden monkey: http://gardenmonkeybookflange.blogspot.com/

colleen said...

Work life balance - still not sorted. Here http://www.rusinurbis.com/2008/10/work-life-balance-again.html

The Garden Monkey said...

I did another, but it's not easy with gardening books

http://thegardenmonkey.blogspot.com/2008/10/garden-monkeys-guide-to-books-17.html

VP said...

Hi - I found you via Colleen.

I've also added a couple of garden book sorteds today.

What a lot of fun this is!

http://vegplotting.blogspot.com/2008/10/sorted.html

Juliet said...

... and I found you via VP!

I've put some sorted books here: http://theclockworkdodo.blogspot.com/2008/10/sorted.html

To avoid confusing anyone else reading this - I'm a different Juliet!