Most books would fall into groups. Illustrations tall, Mass market paperbacks short, Readers Digest Condensed all together. romances in two or three slugs. Audio books and cd's and cassette tapes mostly all together.
Books would not eat or hide or warp each other because they are the same size.
They would take up less storage space because they would fit the shelves almost exactly.
Young children or robots or Alzheimer patients could do the sorting and shelving, since you need not learn the Alphabet.
You go into a store/library organized according to height along spine. And say.
"I'd like to see all the 9 and a half inch books you have. Oh you've gone metric. Well show me all your 241/242 mm books."-- popbottle, Jun 20 2014 Book Size http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_size [Spacecoyote, Jun 20 2014] some interesting facts for Max (depends on what you call interesting) http://www.blifaloo.com/info/facts.php [xandram, Jun 24 2014] [+] sympathy bun
My bookcase takes up a wall'n'half, filled with paperbacks and is, more importantly, _sized_ for paperbacks, with about .5cm freespace at the top of a book. I probably save $5-6 a year on heating. Now they print paperbacks that are apparently sized to stand out on the bookshelf. I don't _want_ them to stand out, bloody idiots.-- FlyingToaster, Jun 20 2014 If we arranged book size alphabetically that would be good.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 20 2014 / If we arranged book size alphabetically that would be good. /
Alphabetically by title or authors last name? Assume by Author would work best in a store-- popbottle, Jun 20 2014 I do some work in a public library collection where this is the system used to catalogue and display the books.-- pocmloc, Jun 20 2014 My husband works scanning, sorting and stocking books at Goodwill. Somehow the books by Sarah Palin and a few other wing-bats end up in the "too shabby to sell bin". He would like this system,I think, as most people that come in have a fixed interest, and as you point out, most books fall into a given size category. There are exceptions of course, so don't jump down my throat and comment about all the exceptions. Nor about his book censorship. He will do it just because he can. I can't talk him out of it.Sorry.-- blissmiss, Jun 20 2014 I like your husband's reviews ;-) I've exercised the final censorship on a few worthy works myself.-- normzone, Jun 20 2014 //by title or authors last name//
Author of course. You could spend a whole week just looking to find Stephen Kings' books... without pseudonyms.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 20 2014 In the Great Library of Alexandria, scrolls were arranged according to their width (i.e. the length of rolled scroll). This was necessary because the scrolls were filed in earthenware tubes built into the walls, and the tubes were of various depths. If a scroll was put into a too-long tube it would be difficult to fish out, and if it were put into a too-short tube it was vulnerable to damage.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 20 2014 I've always thought those Virginians were backward, and they talk funny, too.-- cudgel, Jun 20 2014 Have you got a source for that, [MaxwellBuchanan]?-- pertinax, Jun 21 2014 Try volume 3 of Bearnaise.-- pocmloc, Jun 21 2014 I never reveal my sources.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 21 2014 Good because he's pulling these facts out of his ass.-- rcarty, Jun 21 2014 Facts? I don't recall ever claiming to present facts.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 21 2014 sp. arse-- pocmloc, Jun 21 2014 Quite right. Enough with these transatlantic asses.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 21 2014 Fact can mean "something said to be true or supposed to have happened", therefore actual or alleged.-- rcarty, Jun 21 2014 You want facts? Do you really come here for mere facts? Facts are so cheap and abundant that Google gives them away by the million. They can be had on the back of cereal boxes and on bubble- gum wrappers.
The price of aubergines in Donetsk. The population of Ohio. The wingspan of a monarch butterfly. These are all facts, tawdry and commonplace.
Even the word - "fact" - is cheap and vulgar, closely related to "fart" and "fat".
Accuracy, like the Senegalese dollar, is wildly overvalued. I would prefer one interesting piece of information over a fact any day.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 21 2014 So ... "no".-- pertinax, Jun 23 2014 but why do robots want to read books? Don't they use google?-- pashute, Jun 23 2014 Robots don't need Google, they *are* Google. Right?-- blissmiss, Jun 23 2014 Line up robots according to how short they are. R2D2 first, then The Tall Diplomatic guy.-- popbottle, Jun 23 2014 I don't think it's very nice to call *facts* cheap and vulgar. Sounds like a joke about yo mama. Well then again, [Max] has never pretended to be nice.-- xandram, Jun 24 2014 or factual.-- FlyingToaster, Jun 24 2014 or Swiss.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 24 2014 Beginning with Truman Capote and ending with Abraham Lincoln, I think. Great idea daddykins.-- blissmiss, Jun 24 2014 random, halfbakery