50bookchallenge, 15000pages

[gwynhefar]

Book #126 -- Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, eds., The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, 514 pages.

A wonderful collection of short stories and poems by some of the greats in the fantasy genre. I think I liked this one best of the series, because I've always had fascination for Trickster figures. Of course my own Raven is a Trickster, so that's not surprising.

Progress: 289/365 = 79.2%

Books: 126/150 = 84%

Pages: 36496/50000 = 73.0%

2007 Book List

cross-posted to 15000pages, 50bookchallenge, and gwynraven

Comments

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

I've requested this one from the library but haven't gotten it yet. Did you know they think it is non-fiction?

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

A lot of public libraries classify short story collections as non-fiction. Not sure why, but I've seen it done several times.

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

The library system here seems to think that some story collections are "literary" and thus non-fiction, to be shelved according to the proper dewey decimal number and by the editor's name within the number. Other story collections are fiction and are shelved by the title, not the editor's name. Finding books at the library drives me crazy. Within fiction, they separate out mysteries, westerns, and science fiction, but fantasy isn't part of science fiction now, despite the fact that it used to be. Fantasy just gets a sticker on the spine of the book, as do romance and "Christian", and gets shelved with general fiction. How they determine genre is a bit beyond me anyway. Plus, "young adult" books go somewhere else that I can't even find. They are quite capable of spreading a single series across multiple shelving locations. This makes it difficult to notice new books if I don't know I want them without seeing them on the shelf. To make things even harder, they replaced the somewhat unusable computerized catalog with an even less usable catalog. Sometimes I can't find books in it that I know they have.

Note that if this makes it sound like I hate the local library, that's not the case. It is actually a good library, apart from my frustrations with their shelving system and catalog.

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know that kind of thing is a big problem for public libraries. For one thing, most public libraries don't have the budget to actually hire a cataloguer. Also, the Dewey Decimal System *does* have a place for fiction, but most users like their fiction shelved separately by author, not by DDC. So then the question becomes what goes under DDC and what goes under 'regular fiction'. And segregating the genres is another headache entirely, because there are many books that could easily belong to several. And young adult type stuff is its own problem: what do you classify as young adult? Stuff *written* for young adults or stuff *appropriate* for young adults? Who decides?

I am so glad I don't work in a public library :)