How To Categorize Books In The Fiction Dewey Decimal System?

This was sort of revealed to me today, in that I always downloaded the library app to find books, and then found out how they are physically stocked. It is interesting, and one can appreciate the hard work that goes into that.

Try to work out what isn't in the book. If a secondary world contains no magical or supernatural elements then perhaps it’s alternate history rather than fantasy. The book may not be a romance if there is no central love story or relationship between main characters. This is a good logical exercise to use when a book contains many elements and appears to be ‘genre blend’. Working out what the book is not can help to give you a starting point and help you to work out what it could be. For example, if a book is not set in the future or space then it’s not science fiction. If there is no crime or puzzle then it’s not a mystery.

I think a really good book for someone to start to learn more about science through fiction is “The Rosie Project” by Graeme Simsion. As a genetics professor, Don Tillman is a very logical person. He tries to develop a system to find the love of his life, but everything doesn’t go as planned. The book is very fun and heartwarming. It’s not really a chemistry book, but it does show the kind of way that scientists look at the world, and how they try to solve problems. This book is very good for someone who is starting to look into the world of science, because it shows a very logical person trying to solve problems in his everyday life in a very scientific way. ‘The Disappearing Spoon’ is another fabulous book that weaves great stories about the elements and their scientists with the hard facts. My belief is that beginners will find this an exciting and less frightening introduction to the ‘hard’ science of chemistry. Sam Kean’s clever weaving of historical events, the odd personal tales and his in-depth descriptions of the various elements mean that a great big story is constructed from seemingly dry facts. As Don Tillman recognises in ‘The Rosie Project’, scientists are just as fascinating as any fictional characters and Sam Kean has an array of characters to pull from the long list of the scientists of the elements. A Science Fiction book that centres around someone involved in Forensic Science has to be considered for this list and in this case, the main protagonist David Hunter is a forensic anthropologist which makes ‘The Chemistry of Death’ by Simon Beckett an ideal science fiction book. Although it is more centered towards the aspects of a Forensic Scientist, the detail that goes into the chemical processes of decay, could be of great interest to someone starting out in chemistry. It’s a great ‘story’ book, with plenty of suspense that keeps you gripped to the book, whilst always coming back to Chemistry within the story. This historical fiction novel is set in the 18th century. A young woman, Emilie, was brought up by her alchemist father in isolation. Her father taught her the alchemist’s craft, and after his death, she is left alone with many questions. She sets out to discover the truth about her father’s life and his work. Her journey becomes one of discovery and of the roots of chemistry. The author provides a great insight into historical science and the novels follows the main character on her journey of discovery and growth. A most enjoyable and thought provoking non-fiction book relating chemistry to real crimes is ‘Elements of Murder’ by John Emsley. This book tells the dark history of poisonous elements used throughout time for crime and assists the reader to understand the aspect of chemistry that can be important in Forensic Science and Environmental issues. This book is written in an entertaining manner making an enjoyable and enjoyable read providing a real insight into real life crime.

I view the use of personal tags for books in my library from a very social perspective. Since I am part of a book club, I have a custom column named Book Club Pick with the month/year that the book was picked for reading. I use the tag ‘buddy-read’ for all the books that I read with my friends. I even have a column for Recommended By in which I jot down the name of the person who recommended the book. Overall, my library represents a social history of books that I read. The tags that I created for personal use are to remind me of the mood that a particular book caused me to feel. “Rainy-day” for books that I would like to read on a rainy-day, “beach-read” for light-of-reading-on-the-beach kind of book, “intellectually-challenging” for books that require lots of thought while reading. When I am feeling sad, I would like to read a “hopeful-ending” type of book. So, all in all, the system that I created for organizing my library of books is very personal and even illogical but it is very functional in helping me to manage my reading experience and to find the type of books that I am looking for in order to fulfill my needs as a reader.

While there are many ‘great tribulation’ storylines found within the realms of fantasy and sci-fi, few if any manage to convey the full psychological depth of the events found in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time. A “great tribulation” isn’t merely a story and/or movie about some external entity attempting to destroy a particular civilization in order to test their faith or some other attribute; rather it is the trying of a civilization’s very identity. In the case of Children of Time this identity is slowly and inexorably changed by an outside intelligence over the course of generations. The tribulation of the human crew is slowly eroded as their original mission is strippey byitty one peg at a time while at the same time the massive numbers of spiders go through a forced evolutionary and intellectual apotheosis. The tribulation is dual-layered and long-lasting which is what ultimately makes the ‘ending’ so very earned and even more unsettling than it might have otherwise been. This kind of ‘tribulation’ is handled in many great tales of fantasy and sci-fi, but none of them as superbly as ‘Children of Time’ by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Here the conflict is not so much with an alien enemy as with the slow destruction of a human mission and of human minds, and with the forced evolution of an alien species through a kind of intelligencedownload. There’s a real ‘tribulation’ going on here – not just a fight – and it’s spread over generations. It’s a quietly horrible set of ideas, and a deeply rewarding read. Very gripping. Very unique.

Of course, there are other massive children’s book publishers like Scholastic (so extensively entrenched in schools and book fairs that it’s sort of surreal). But in terms of prestige and literary distinction, I’d rank Penguin Random House (Knopf Books for Young Readers, G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, etc.) above the rest. And then there’s HarperCollins Children’s Books, with its enormous backlist. But really, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster are the two other big players in the traditional publishing world. But again, this is corporate, publishing-bigwigs stuff. The actual YA publishing world is a bunch of passionate, idiosyncratic individual editors who happen to work for these various companies. The logos on the spines of the published books are pretty irrelevant.

There’s a tremendous amount of love for humor as a genre driver. A book that makes people laugh has a devout and persisitent reader base, often from crossover audiences (fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, for example). Humor can also be witty and winning, especially in books with lots of dialogue in the romantic comedy genre and beyond. And even when humor is used to explore tough, serious topics, popular and successful YA authors like David Yoon and Mary HK Choi and Phil Stamper use humor to fantastic end in their work. I believe a funny YA book can rise above the rest in a crowded field of books because most people seek out authentic experiences of joy and are willing to spread the word to others when they encounter something humorous. This can be a very difficult talent to master above the typical plot device, so it makes the books that are laughing their way to the top all the more impressive.

It is often the point of a serious work on absurdity to be humorous. Much humor in war literature comes from the obvious illogic of the system and the ways in which the unwise decisions of higher-ups lead to more horror. The famous Catch-22 circular reasoning that keeps Yossarian in combat is as funny as it is stupid. And the humor is the point of the comedy: in laughing at a joke we understand its stupidity. Thus the humor of a war story is usually closely aligned with the horror of the story as well.

I am a huge fan of the '100 unread books' challenge. My collections reflect this. I have 'The 100 List' collection that contains the 100 books that I intend to read before I buy any more books. Then I have 'The Backlog' collection that contains all the other books that I have purchased but that are not on 'The 100 List' and are therefore not being read. When I finish a book from 'The 100 List' I remove it from the list and move the top book from 'The Backlog' to 'The 100 List'. This way 'The 100 List' is a constantly rolling list of 100 books that I am reading. It turns my huge Kindle library from a source of guilt to a game. The two collections are simple to set up and use but they enforce a strict discipline on my reading that has already saved me so much money in avoiding impulse purchases of books.

The obvious and monumental choice here would be Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. The journey to Jupiter in the film is painstakingly and realistically depicted. The quiet, routine, often psychological pressure on the crew is conveyed through the perfect, sinister logic of HAL. The real journey in the film is that of human experience in a very plausible mission to Saturn (in the book). The mysterious monoliths merely add to the whole.