The color of books

I don’t remember exactly what we were discussing, Duncan Stewart and I, but I ended up sharing a photo of my bookshelf, and to his surprise, it is color coordinated.

How very unintellectual of me, he must’ve thought. Or rather, how unusual that someone who reads so much, and still enjoys physical books (which, by the way, are here to stay), would chose an order so random.

Random indeed

Yesterday I decided to expand the bookshelf in question, doubling its surface to include some 900 books in total. In the face of recent news regarding my departure from the company I founded, I “inherited” all that I’d brought to the office over the years. Many of them, hardcovers, meant lots of color to be ordered, organized, fitted in to the structured color pattern.

There is a certain pleasure in organizing books that way. Though it may seem absurd, I take a certain pleasure seeing Joseph Stiglitz sitting next to Lawrence Lessig, or Virginia Woolf standing side-by-side Leo Tolstoy. I own (and purchase) many more books than I’ll ever be able to read, and so I think, they might as well be organized so that I can stumble upon them when I expect it the least.

When I need to come back to a classic — say, The Innovator’s Dilemma, or The Five Dysfunctions of a Team — I look for it not by its author’s name (here, Christensen and Lencioni), but by its color. One is white and blue, the other one red; and next to it, you’ll find Orwell’s complete works, or the first edition of The Alpine Review.

Great discoveries are unintentional

Chaos is a required part of our lives. Everytime I acquire a new book, it first sits on my bedside table for a while. Then, due to the high incoming volume of new books, I periodically have to empty it out. I grab the book, and sort it. By color, obviously.

Many have written about this phenomenon, and given it a name; serendipity. A “fortunate happenstance”, a “pleasant surprise” — oh look, Roger Martin’s The Design of Business! — serendipity first appeared on the stage of worldly literature thanks to Horace Walpole who, having read the classic tale The Three Princes of Serendip, turned a patronym into a common noun. The year was 1754.

The word shows up again in Voltaire’s Zadig — a fiction tale — but most importantly in Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s doctoral thesis, The Life and Work of Phillip Ignace Semmelweis. Celine’s fellow M.D., Semmelweis, discovered by chance that the washing of hands significantly reduced patient mortality. The conviction was reinforced by anecdotal evidence, but rejected by the Viennese Medical Society.

It was the randomness of his discovery, perhaps, that made it so unlikely to be accepted.