Bookshops.. I really hate the way they now designate literature as fiction..

[sammyc]

It's not a new thing, it's been creeping in for a long time.. but it really annoys me.

Once upon a time light fiction was 'fiction', Eng Lit (well any Lit.) was 'literature', or 'modern classics', and the 'Classics' meant Plato et al. Leaving a few loose categories and authors to come down on on one side or the other according to judgment.

Now, for the most part, all fiction is just fiction; and Dickens and Austen are now the Classics. Online is a little better but browsing round physical stores, which I used to love, now just irritates & confuses me. I find it really difficult to sift & assess what I'm looking at when Penguin Classics are alternating with modern froth, especially if short of time and you don't want to trawl along every fiction title in the shop. Usually (& it may have a tang of literary snobbery, but it's not to say I would never want to browse other genres, just have them approximately together), I just want to pick up titles from a section and know they should be at least loosely in the same field of writing quality - that way you can narrow down what you might be interested in on a particular day, & it's how you can make new finds. In the same way you wouldn't want travel & cookery lumped in together etc. Sigh.

[Ttaskmaster]

I guess, like music, so many people complained that XYZ was in Section A, when "any idiot can CLEARLY see it belongs in Section B, sub-genre 25, type 3, classification G - Serialised adult-teen fictional romantic horror...!!!", or somesuch.

I have friends who work in bookshops. They get seriously obsessive customers on a very frequent basis... it's usually the Twilight/Anita Blake types that are the worst!

I'd reckon that Classics are now Classical Literature, with Modern Classics (ie last 1-200 years) now considered the common Classics. Not sure where you'd put older (100AD-1750AD) Literature, although I suspect anything older than 200-ish years is seen more as educational reference than entertainment. The likes of Billy S will be in the Drama section.

How do libraries do it? Are they still on the Dewey system?

[sammyc]

I guess, like music, so many people complained that XYZ was in Section A, when "any idiot can CLEARLY see it belongs in Section B, sub-genre 25, type 3, classification G - Serialised adult-teen fictional romantic horror...!!!", or somesuch.

Yes I can see how that would happen having had some slight dealings with the book trade. Although those sub-categories wouldn't affect how you organise literature as I see it, as you wouldn't go & look for them cheek by jowl with Dickens anyway (or would you). I guess they & light fiction could all go in together for me, in theory.. but not so well in practice as it would be an unwieldy amount of unsorted stock.

On an A-Z fiction basis it's not so much of a problem, if you know who you're after, and can rise above Helen Fielding being next to Henry. It's the browsing side that makes it annoying. Plus finding there is a table spread high with the 'no 1 bestseller by Dawn French' etc and not a Sillitoe in the entire shop.

Having said that I was in the Smiths in my next-largest town yesterday, ie not the very smallest of branches, and they managed to subdivide literature from other fiction.. however as that amounted to a 3 foot bank of shelving, for literature, classics, poetry, plays, there was nothing above the most basic one-title-per-author.

I'm sure you're pretty much right on the money with the received general classifications as you give them, there was a distinction at one time between where you put the more modern of the modern authors (but time has passed since I first shopped for books and 'modern' will shift continuously along the line of course!)

Nostalgia for certain past bookshops is part of it, even taking changing times into account.. as for libraries I believe the Dewey system is still in but I wouldn't like to swear to it.

[Funkstar]

Just be thankful there are still bookshops at all

[sammyc]

Indeed it's certainly a case of only just. No Dillons, Smiths that only barely count, the 3 independents we used to have locally long gone, same goes for bookshops I knew & loved when living in other places. As for second-hand books I actually now can't think of one central to my nearest city.

The internet, dumbing down, chicken & egg-ing.. whichever way you cut it we are not going back to a solid base of physical bookshops from here.

[Ttaskmaster]

I'd also guess certain things get mixed to maximise marketing display space for other titles?

[Dareos]

I detest the way the pseudo gothic teenage romance crap has been given the classification of *Dark Fantasy*

I love my fantasy books,whether its Martin or Hobb or Abercrombie and so on and so forth. Good solid swords and sorcery stuff, with nary a fang in sight unless its adorning the jaws of some slavering beast from the nether regions of some fiery pit.

However, whenever I pop into waterstones, or browse fantasy in Amazon, i have to fight my way through a never ending torrent of prepubescent vampire/werewolf angst before I get a glimmer of a decent, well written slice of the arcane.
Whats worse is that decent authors are being sidelined by publishers looking to make money on the back of the Twilight franchise, that sad pathetic equivalent to the thirtysomethings Bridget Jones, where in place of Darcy we have a vegetarian, sparkly fairy, sorry vampire, as a love interest.
So now we have a plethora of subpar fan fiction wannabes flooding the market with drivel and keeping me from finding those few gems in a very very large rough.

These should be reclassified perhaps, and placed in the self harming romantics section, or possibly the bargain bin, the one outside the back door that tramps urinate into, leaving my cherished Fantasy (not SciFi, they are not even remotely similar) back in pride of place somewhere near the basement in some dusty corner where I can lurk incongrously and laugh quietly to myself when someone picks up a Janny Wurtz book, and quietly applaud the newcomer who stumbles over David Gemmell.

Not that I'm biased...

[Saracen]

Feel better for getting that off your chest, Dareos?

Not that I disagree, mind.

[hesham1516]

Does no one here use the goodreads site?

I find it invaluable, and I love the 'lists with this book' and 'readers also read' features. Those features make it easier to find something decent from someone with a similar taste in books, though it is not always the case.

Here you go Dereos: https://www.goodreads.com/genres/dark-fantasy