I dusted the books in the hallway case this morning. It’s been so dry and windy in Taos that the house is coated with dust it seems. Certainly the books were.
I organize my authors by who I think would get along. I base it on how and what they write. For instance, on the top shelf I have Annie Proulx, Kent Haruf, Jim Harrison, Larry Watson, and the late Larry Brown. The five set their books in rural settings, have strong characters and distinctive voices. Larry Brown was from Mississippi. The rest are Westerners.
Other groupings on my shelves: writers that are friends, “bad boys,” Southerners, New Englanders, one-hit wonders, British writers, etc.
I posted this piece on my old blog Fiction de Taos, now in the process of demolition. Since that posting I’ve acquired collections of “new” authors such as David Sedaris and Pam Huston.