finding books
Jul. 30th, 2011 05:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serynWhen I was a kid I really admired the Dewey Decimal system for libraries. But I was hideously disappointed to discover that it's only for non-fiction. Obviously the categorization would be a nightmare if you really tried to shelve fiction based on the topics covered in the work. But as a child I really didn't care/understand how much work something was, adults were always making themselves out to be these super beings who deserved to have complete control over the world. So why weren't they doing things properly?
When I was in college, I discovered the Library of Congress system and just figured no one knew what the fuck they were doing. When I asked someone, she said that Dewey was easier for patrons to remember so most non-research libraries tended that way. I didn't ever remember what the various numbers in Dewey meant. I always had to look my number range up in the card catalog. A lot of the organization seemed prejudicial too and subject to bias. There wasn't any authority designating official Dewey numbers. So if you went to another library, you might very well have to start your lookup from scratch. (This is something that has improved somewhat. Even if there isn't an authority for the official numbers, they do seem to have standardized.) But as long as the patrons need to look up the numbers for self-service browsing anyway, why not use the real schema?
But we're still running across the lack of organization of fiction.
Of the people who read, I suspect the vast majority read exclusively fiction. Many of those probably only read popular fiction.
I understand that schools are supposed to educate people and teach them to understand what they read, so there needs to be demonstrably worthy works to start that foundation of analysis. But I talk to people over and over again who say they haven't read a book since high school English class. A lot of them have degrees, sometimes masters or PhDs. They chose their career path based on an avoidance of reading because "all books are boring and reading is a waste of time." And considering some of the books we read were boring... I have no idea why they're "classic" because I couldn't comprehend the characters' choices and the setting is archaic; most of them seem to be classic because the people on school boards were forced to read them when they were children so they need to make sure the pain is passed down to future generations. But when the only things schools teach is how to loathe reading, not how to find entertainment value in it, we lose something. Maybe they shouldn't teach regular pulp paperbacks as literature, but couldn't they at least have some sort of organization to the school's fiction library? Couldn't there be a concept of "dessert" books for after you've eaten a whole plate of burned broccoli that requires serious jaw muscles to chew? Couldn't literature teachers say, after teaching The Scarlet Letter, "Are there examples in recent books you've read that echo these themes? Do you see references to this work in movies? Do you think people still suffer the stigma of sin differently if they are poor or wealthy? Are there examples of women raising children on their own on television, how are they portrayed?" Not saying that's specifically how it should happen, but bringing in other media, not treating "real books" as completely separate from books people read on their own... these things would really help.
(That would actually help for non-fiction as well. I remember believing that you couldn't be president, ever, because the only presidents we'd heard of were dead. So in order to become president, you had to be dead already.)
When I go to my local branch library, I can't find things to read very often. I get books, but it's a self-fulfilling search. I want great fantasy fiction and all they have are mysteries, so the librarian said they don't order science fiction because their circulation numbers for those books are very low. Well, yeah, if you get fewer than a dozen new sff books in a year and get 300 new mysteries, chances are pretty good that you're not going to have a high circ for the sff books. And because those of us who read sff those go to other branches when we want to browse (I try to go at least once a year, but it's a huge hassle.) the few sff books they get tend to be chosen based on catalog blurbs put out by the publisher and therefore they suck.
I'd like a better way to find books. I would ask for recommendations, but there aren't a lot of people like me around me. Most people don't read sff books except those people I know who read everything. I'm too lazy of a reader to even wonder if I should ask.... to be honest, that scene in the first HP movie where Hermione drops this huge tome onto the table and says "a little light reading"... and everyone stares at her... that speaks to me because even though I'm a reader, I'd be one of the staring people. When I'm talking light reading, I'm talking vampire romances, shapechanger fantasies, pulp series mysteries.... but the universal constant in my choices is that I never want to read a book about someone who has children as her main focus. So I don't do amazingly well when I can't browse in person or don't have a good source for recommendations.
Other than the books which are written by foreigners (I'm not great at detecting the country of origin for modern authors, but some like Dumas are known to not be American.) but which the library has plastered with "African-American" stickers on the spine, I don't do amazingly well detecting books that are going to be offensive. But with library books, there's no real financial risk. I just return it if it doesn't work out.
It seems like we could do a lot better at organizing fiction reading just by having more topics listed. Or if we could have a NOT sort available.
werewolves NOT horror NOT historical
fantasy AND magic NOT swords
science fiction NOT post-apocalypse NOT horror
Instead I get friends who tell me I will like Lilith Saintcrow whose books suffer from the "demons are evil, you can tell because they're called demons and we all share a common culture based upon Christianity and that's their word for nasty monsters" and a main character who abandons her friends to a vicious death in case it might save a child from being returned to her loving father. In the one LS book I read, the main character got 7 of her best friends killed violently while failing in her (stupid) goal. I can't imagine why anyone would read that book, let alone why anyone would recommend it. It's not like LS is Charles Dickens or even dead, so the classics rule where you torture other people just so you weren't the only idiot stupid enough to read that book applies.
When I was in college, I discovered the Library of Congress system and just figured no one knew what the fuck they were doing. When I asked someone, she said that Dewey was easier for patrons to remember so most non-research libraries tended that way. I didn't ever remember what the various numbers in Dewey meant. I always had to look my number range up in the card catalog. A lot of the organization seemed prejudicial too and subject to bias. There wasn't any authority designating official Dewey numbers. So if you went to another library, you might very well have to start your lookup from scratch. (This is something that has improved somewhat. Even if there isn't an authority for the official numbers, they do seem to have standardized.) But as long as the patrons need to look up the numbers for self-service browsing anyway, why not use the real schema?
But we're still running across the lack of organization of fiction.
Of the people who read, I suspect the vast majority read exclusively fiction. Many of those probably only read popular fiction.
I understand that schools are supposed to educate people and teach them to understand what they read, so there needs to be demonstrably worthy works to start that foundation of analysis. But I talk to people over and over again who say they haven't read a book since high school English class. A lot of them have degrees, sometimes masters or PhDs. They chose their career path based on an avoidance of reading because "all books are boring and reading is a waste of time." And considering some of the books we read were boring... I have no idea why they're "classic" because I couldn't comprehend the characters' choices and the setting is archaic; most of them seem to be classic because the people on school boards were forced to read them when they were children so they need to make sure the pain is passed down to future generations. But when the only things schools teach is how to loathe reading, not how to find entertainment value in it, we lose something. Maybe they shouldn't teach regular pulp paperbacks as literature, but couldn't they at least have some sort of organization to the school's fiction library? Couldn't there be a concept of "dessert" books for after you've eaten a whole plate of burned broccoli that requires serious jaw muscles to chew? Couldn't literature teachers say, after teaching The Scarlet Letter, "Are there examples in recent books you've read that echo these themes? Do you see references to this work in movies? Do you think people still suffer the stigma of sin differently if they are poor or wealthy? Are there examples of women raising children on their own on television, how are they portrayed?" Not saying that's specifically how it should happen, but bringing in other media, not treating "real books" as completely separate from books people read on their own... these things would really help.
(That would actually help for non-fiction as well. I remember believing that you couldn't be president, ever, because the only presidents we'd heard of were dead. So in order to become president, you had to be dead already.)
When I go to my local branch library, I can't find things to read very often. I get books, but it's a self-fulfilling search. I want great fantasy fiction and all they have are mysteries, so the librarian said they don't order science fiction because their circulation numbers for those books are very low. Well, yeah, if you get fewer than a dozen new sff books in a year and get 300 new mysteries, chances are pretty good that you're not going to have a high circ for the sff books. And because those of us who read sff those go to other branches when we want to browse (I try to go at least once a year, but it's a huge hassle.) the few sff books they get tend to be chosen based on catalog blurbs put out by the publisher and therefore they suck.
I'd like a better way to find books. I would ask for recommendations, but there aren't a lot of people like me around me. Most people don't read sff books except those people I know who read everything. I'm too lazy of a reader to even wonder if I should ask.... to be honest, that scene in the first HP movie where Hermione drops this huge tome onto the table and says "a little light reading"... and everyone stares at her... that speaks to me because even though I'm a reader, I'd be one of the staring people. When I'm talking light reading, I'm talking vampire romances, shapechanger fantasies, pulp series mysteries.... but the universal constant in my choices is that I never want to read a book about someone who has children as her main focus. So I don't do amazingly well when I can't browse in person or don't have a good source for recommendations.
Other than the books which are written by foreigners (I'm not great at detecting the country of origin for modern authors, but some like Dumas are known to not be American.) but which the library has plastered with "African-American" stickers on the spine, I don't do amazingly well detecting books that are going to be offensive. But with library books, there's no real financial risk. I just return it if it doesn't work out.
It seems like we could do a lot better at organizing fiction reading just by having more topics listed. Or if we could have a NOT sort available.
werewolves NOT horror NOT historical
fantasy AND magic NOT swords
science fiction NOT post-apocalypse NOT horror
Instead I get friends who tell me I will like Lilith Saintcrow whose books suffer from the "demons are evil, you can tell because they're called demons and we all share a common culture based upon Christianity and that's their word for nasty monsters" and a main character who abandons her friends to a vicious death in case it might save a child from being returned to her loving father. In the one LS book I read, the main character got 7 of her best friends killed violently while failing in her (stupid) goal. I can't imagine why anyone would read that book, let alone why anyone would recommend it. It's not like LS is Charles Dickens or even dead, so the classics rule where you torture other people just so you weren't the only idiot stupid enough to read that book applies.
