February 6, 2008 10:13
The Unabridged Rules of Library Management
RULE #1: THE PRIME DIRECTIVE -- It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it. Therefore, to be placed on Matt Selman's living room bookshelves, a book must have been read cover to cover, every word, by Matt Selman. If you are in the home of Matt Selman and see a book on the living room shelves, you know FOR SURE it has been read by Matt Selman.
RULE #1: COROLLARY A: The living room books ARE NOT the combined book collections of Matt Selman and his wife. (She may have read some of them, but who knows, really.) This is only the collection of Matt Selman.
RULE #1: COROLLARY B: Writing in books on the living room shelves that Matt Selman has NOT read -- I) Indexes. II) The ending part of the author's acknowledgments that is just a list of names. III) Poetry that has been snuck into an otherwise interesting book. IV) Books written by my father that I told him I read. V) The super boring text in art books.
RULE #2 -- Actual book copies of audiobooks that have been listened to, but not actually read, MAY be placed on the living room library shelves, IF A) the audiobook listened to was UNABRIDGED, and B) the actual book copies of unabridged audiobooks have been looked through to make sure you didn't miss anything and to see the pictures. If anyone says "listening isn't the same as reading," get into protracted and unpleasant argument about it until they think you are insane and leave to visit someone whose bookshelves are full of a mixture of read and unread books -- A LIVING HELL.
RULE #2: COROLLARY A -- It is encouraged, but not mandatory, to "break-in" the listened-to-but-not-actually-read-with-your-eyes books by creasing the spines, dog-earing the pages, etc., so they "fit-in" with the read-with-your-eyes books.
RULE #3: NO BORROWING -- No borrowing of books is allowed under any situation.
RULE #3: COROLLARY A -- Books may be borrowed if it is a super super super awkward situation. (Like, a pregnant lady really wants something to read while on she's on bed rest, and your wife says, "sure you can borrow The Tipping Point, Matt won't mind, right honey?")
RULE #3: COROLLARY B -- If a book is allowed to be "borrowed," a replacement is purchased online as soon as the original leaves the house. No attempt is made to recover the "borrowed" book.
RULE #3: COROLLARY C -- DVDs may be borrowed at any time. Keep as many as you want as long as you want. Just don't take Time Bandits, Simon Schama's A History of Britain, The Lord of the Rings Extended Editions, um... the original Die Hard, I guess. Eh, forget it... take 'em all. Why did I buy these stupid things at $20 bucks a pop? I wish I had that money back.
Tours of the library are available from 10-5 PDT, until the writers' strike is over. Proposed borrowing of book(s) will result in abrupt cessation of tour and re-direction to DVD closet or boxes of wife's books in the garage.
About Nerd World
Lev Grossman
Lev Grossman blogs about anything and everything that could be plausibly labeled geeky--science fiction, fantasy, video games, comic books, tech stuff, and so on. If it could get you beaten up in junior high, it's fair game. About the Author
Matt Selman
Matt Selman has worked on eleven seasons and over two hundred episodes of The Simpsons. He currently serves as an Executive Producer. About the Author
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Reader Comments (15)
I admire anyone that can keep and organize a book, cd, or dvd longer than a couple of days for rental and return... kudos - kevin devoto
Posted by kevin devoto | February 6, 2008 11:39 PM
Are we allowed to sit in your living room and read the book there, never removing it from that room of course?
Posted by Heather | February 7, 2008 1:14 AM
Wait, Matt, we're missing the most important piece of information here. How are the books arranged on the shelf? Author, subject, time period, goodness, or aesthetically pleasing?
Posted by Anna | February 7, 2008 6:21 AM
Ill, this implies you read or listened to the tipping point. Forget the $20. What about all those brain cells you lost?
Posted by That Anonymous Dude | February 7, 2008 9:13 AM
I think we should all live by Battlestar Galactica's Adama's words. You should never lend a book. Just make it a gift.
Posted by Nat X | February 7, 2008 10:26 AM
I'm afraid I'm one of those knuckleheads who keeps unread books on the bookshelf. They are, however, not on public display, as I keep my bookshelves in my home office. Does that count? Having financed my college education by working in a bookstore for three years, I collected way more books than I would ever read, and I find it handy to keep some of those unread books on the shelf so I always have something "new" to read. I like that when I finish a book I can put it back on the shelf and instantly find something new. It's like my own public library.
Posted by homegirl | February 7, 2008 10:46 AM
Also, never put an laminated bookshelf directly over a heating vent. Just trust me on that one.
Posted by Church | February 7, 2008 11:02 AM
Book borrowing should be punishable by death. I'm so not joking. An extra special torture should be saved for those people who borrow something and then happily pass it on to someone else, who gives it to someone else, etc..., until there's absolutely no hope of me ever seeing it again.
Posted by Meredith | February 7, 2008 11:09 AM
Talk about awkward borrowing situations. I had a friend who wanted to "borrow" a book for his mom who was in the hospital with cancer. The book in question was expensive and out-of-print and therefore not replaceable. Of course I gave it to him. I lent another out-of-print gem to my mother, and then suffered silently as I watched said book wither away under the harsh sun while it sat in the backseat of her car for several months. One day while I was at her house, I snuck into her car and secretly snatched it back.
Posted by homegirl | February 7, 2008 11:44 AM
Matt,
Can I borrow the galleon on the top shelf? I'll bring it right back, for reals. I just need it to complete a short film entitled "The Spanish Fleet Versus the Giant Boat Crushing SeaJew: The Rescinding of the The Alhambra Decree".
It will be filmed in IMAX. In my bathtub.
Posted by Comment: The Movie | February 7, 2008 11:53 AM
My problem is organization. I believe in the category -> author method that leads to maximum efficiency. My beloved, but borderline OCD psychologist wife likes a "group by relative height" system that puts R.A. Salvatore beside Toni Morrison beside the tile book from Home Depot. I found that the only solution is to keep buying so many books that she can't keep up.
Posted by Chris Goodson
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February 7, 2008 12:01 PM
No books on the shelf that you haven't read? You've got to be kidding! I haven't read half the books I own (and since I buy books faster then I can read them, it will always be this way) and nothing is better then to be surrounded by all those stories still left to discover.
Of course moving said books (as I've been doing for the past month) is a special kind of hell.
BTW, Mr. Goodson, you deserve a medal for putting up with that. Organize books by size? Now that's just nuts. It goes general category -> Specific category (if needed) -> alpha by author -> chronologically when I know the order and alpha by title if I don't.
Posted by Matt S | February 7, 2008 2:34 PM
I agree with Matt S. . . . I'm a collector by nature, so if I see a book I NEED (i.e., something 1) by an author I enjoy, 2) on a subject I'm interested in, or 3) I've heard good things about), I buy it and put it on the shelf (also as Matt said: by category, then author, and then chronological order after perusing the copyright page). It may not get read for a year, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna let a nice-looking book get it's spine ruined by sitting in a pile somewhere . . . however, for me, this rule tends to apply to hardcover books only. Paperbacks get beat to hell and tossed under my bed or in the backseat of my car.
As for audiobooks, I tend to think that listening is as good as reading (or close enough), but only in unabridged form. You can claim that you've "read" the book in that you have the same basic understanding of said item's contents, and no one could prove otherwise . . .
Posted by FanBuoyant | February 7, 2008 2:46 PM
Rule No. 3.2(a): Note difference between borrow and loan...
Alas, numerous moves across the country severely diminished the pleasure I derived from staring across the vast expanse of written word displayed in my library. After more than one tearful triage, and angry conversations with my wife over why I needed to display the primary pop-culture academic texts used in my college thesis, purchased ten years later over ebay for only nostalgia's sake, the collection has been whittled down to a svelte shadow of its former self, yet far more transportable, sexy and comment-provoking. Plus, most of "our" friends, as opposed to "my" friends (who are scattered across the country nowhere near where I live), want to borrow my nerd-texts, anyway. ("You have comic books next to Dostoevsky?" "Yes, and I read the graphic novels more than once.")
Also, c'mon -- my wife still doesn't understand why I have a problem with the way she treats the spines of my books...!
Posted by omahalawyer | February 8, 2008 10:13 AM
Omaha,
You have my condolences for the loss of your books. A friend of mine once lost a significant chunk of lovely library due to not keeping up with the fees for her storage place after she moved cross country (she left a lot of stuff in OR while she couch surfed the east coast looking for a job) I couldn't even imagine having to go through that.
Posted by Matt S | February 8, 2008 1:23 PM