Books.

I have a lot of books. Not as many as others have, true; but still, a great many. For much of the last month, they have been in boxes or, more recently, in piles. I have piles and piles of books. Most are now in shelves in their new home - my new home. But I am short of bookshelves, so some still linger in piles.

Shelving the books was a chore - an interesting one, perhaps, as I looked at the titles (some of which I couldn't remember at all, others which invoked powerful memories of reading them, or where I read them, or where I bought them, or who gave them to me).

I was struck by a problem though: how to shelve them. Not literally how to shelve them - not physically - but in what order. Should I have any order on my shelves at all?

There were - are - many different ways I could classify them. Here are some of the ways I thought of:

• genre


• author a-z


• title a-z


• size


• subject

There are many others I have left.

I quite like the idea of moderate chaos, but size limits this - big books have to go onto big shelves, and it makes sense for them to go together - and I wanted my near-complete set of Granta together. Travel guides need to be together, too. And other series. But if all my copies from "A Dance to the Music of Time" should sit next to each other, what about my other books by Powell? And what about other series - Stieg Larsen, say? A-Z by author doesn't really make sense for a lot of books where the author isn't important (it would make no sense for Iain Banks' book on whisky, Raw Spirit, to sit with Complicity, The Bridge and Whit rather than other books about whisky; and books on whisky should be near books on wine. And food. And Scotland...)

I also have a lot of books on art (mostly quite large volumes, so they get caught by the size rule, too) where the author is irrelevant and the subject key; and many science books - both academic (from my former life) and popular. And a small collection of books by members of my family.

So I settled on a mixture of random chaos and rigid taxonomy. Mostly, they have been put on shelves randomly, but every so often order breaks out - travel guides (but not travel literature), Granta, academic science, children's books, art, food and drink, Scotland, family books, all sorted together; most fiction and non-fiction, though, are jumbled together, sorted perhaps by size, when they were read (inasmuch as they will have been put on the old shelves at the same time, and so boxed together, and unboxed together), or some other classification that isn't apparent.

I also have a great many empty boxes. And some more shelves on order...

Moving Talisker.

Since I believe Talisker has a few fans amongst you, I thought I'd let you know how he's doing.

He has settled into his new home very well, I think. The vet suggested I give him a natural tranquiliser before and after moving, which I did, but I don't think it made any difference to his behaviour at all. The vet also said that I should keep him inside for three weeks (and widgetfox said it should be four weeks...), but he has shown no interest in going out at all - no dashes for the front door, or scratching or miaowing to get out; no digging escape tunnels - so living in a second floor flat, he may just become a house-cat. (It may be possible to put a cat flap in the door into the shared garden, though I might worry that he'd go the wrong way and someone else might let him onto the street. Still, I have two or three weeks to think about that.)

I remain incredibly impressed - and occasionally distressed - by his sense of time. Without fail, he wakes me at 4am. (This is the occasionally distressing bit.) At which point I chuck him out of the bedroom until his miaowing at the door wakes me again at about 5am and he gets fed. (Those of you who say that I am only encouraging him may be right, but feeding him at 5am is better than not getting any sleep.)

Then again, at 4.45pm every day, he demands more food.

He enjoys chasing rubber balls, and I enjoy watching him haring around on the wooden floors, like a hyperactive cartoon cat as he slides around, crashing into wall, boxes and books.

So, no change there, then.