How Many Books Make a Foot?
In which I check my bookcases with a tape measure, look for words, and revisit pre-Beatles stories.
Traditionally when someone has asked us how many books we have, we’ve always given them a number. In our family home in Texas, it used to be around 3,000. When we knew we were moving to our new condo, which was exactly half the square footage we made an effort to reduce that number by half. (A process covered in a previous newsletter.)
We are still unpacking and rearranging, plus we may have picked up a few new volumes along the way, so I haven’t done an actual count of our bibliographic condo residents yet, but it’s probably around the target 1500 mark.
But have we been measuring our volumes incorrectly?
Earlier this week, we watched an episode of the British TV house-hunting show Escape to the Country. In it, the host kept mentioning that the couple searching for a new place to live had a lot of books they had to accommodate and needed to find a property with a room that could be furnished as a library. This sounded fair enough to us.
The book collection was mentioned repeatedly without any indication of how extensive it was - until in one offhand remark the husband said he had
“30 feet of books.”
Our immediate reaction was “Is that a lot?” - The way the TV host kept talking about it we assumed it was.
There was only one way to find out. Tape measure in hand I checked the shelves in my office (photo above).
Imagine my surprise to find out that a typical shelf measures 2’ 6” and with six shelves per tall bookcase, and four bookcases on one wall of my office I had 60 feet of books just sitting behind me as I type this.
So 30 feet of books was about two bookcases full - that doesn’t seem that much. - But how many books is that? - How many books make a foot?
The top shelf in the photo above has 45 books on it, the middle shelf (the one with the tape measure on it) has 70. That’s quite a range.
How many books make a foot? It depends. It could be 22.5 or it could be 35, or it could be some other number entirely.
So is measuring your book collection by the foot a good idea? It may help with figuring out how many bookcases you need, but that’s about it.
On a quick count, we have around 126 feet of shelf space in the new place, but as to how many books do we have? We still don’t know for certain.
Alan
Other Stuff
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Brabazon Bits
This week I’ve been focused on finishing compiling the list of terms to index once the Brabazon book has been formatted for publication. It’s been an interesting exercise going back through the text and instead of just checking the narrative flow thinking about it from the perspective of someone, like me, who may be searching for specific information within the text.
I recently wrote about the importance of indexing in the weekly newsletter I publish as part of my enterprise content consulting work -
It turned out to be the second most popular post since I launched the newsletter - It appears I’m not the only one who thinks those columns of words and numbers at the back of a book are invaluable.
For the Brabazon book that list of words to look for topped out at around 300 items.
Word Slinging
If you are in the Baltimore / Washington DC / Delaware / Southern PA area come check out the Books & Brews event on 16th November. I’ll be there from 11:00am until 2:30pm with some of the historical short-story anthologies that have my words in them.
Podcast Procrastinations
This week I completed the research and wrote up the first half of the script for the upcoming episode of THE FORGOTTEN BEATLES podcast that is scheduled to go live the first week of November. It will feature the stories of Len Garry, The Quarrymen’s first bass player, and Johnny Gentle, the singer who The Silver Beetles backed on their first tour in 1960.
If you haven’t checked out our new series on The Before They Were Beatles network, you can catch up by clicking HERE or just look for us on your podcast platform of choice.
Pages and Screens
Books Read in 2024 -.“The White Ship” by Charles Spencer.
I’ve come across multiple references to the 1120 disaster of The White Ship in various books on British history over the years. As a result, I knew the basics that the ship sank in the English Channel killing the heir to the throne and a large number of English nobles causing a seismic shift in the line of succession.
I was hoping this book would expand on the details, but unfortunately, it failed to deliver on that count. It’s a book of three distinct parts. The first is a detailed account of the rise of Henry I, and the last is an introduction to the civil war that broke out after his death between his daughter, Matilda, and his nephew, Stephen for the throne.
The inciting incident for that war being the death of Henry’s heir, William, on the aforementioned ship.
Yet the titular vessel and its fate get only 10 pages out of the 200+ pages of narrative. So little is known of the events or the 300 people who were lost that the reader doesn’t get to know the victims beyond a litany of names and titles. As a result, there’s no feeling of empathy or loss around the tragedy.
On the whole this was a good overview of the reign of Henry I, but definitely mistitled
Our online bookstore at Bookshop.org is fully up to date with the books read so far in 2024, so you can pick up copies of any that interest you, while also helping out local independent bookstores.
Weekly Web Round-Up
Batman On The Cover - The journey through Batman’s comics publishing history continues as we move into July 1969 with books published in Norway, Sweden, and the UK.
My pick from this week’s batch of Bat comics has to be this summer album from Swedish publisher Centerförlaget. It was a last hurrah before the Swedish reprint license passed to another publisher. The painted portrait cover reflects a feeling of excitement and a reminder of more innocent times. And sneaking in the iconic TV version of the Batmobile is a nice touch too.
Where on the Web is Alan?
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See you next time
Alan J. Porter
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