I ventured into my office on Saturday with the intention of sorting through the piles and piles (and piles) of books that have gathered there in the past couple of months. I do this several times a year, partly to remind myself what I have down there and also to figure out where I fit books for a review. In order to keep some kind of order in the house, when books arrive I make a pretty quick "yes/no" decision. Some books I know I will never review and those go immediately into the garage for donation. The ones I know for sure I've been waiting for go downstairs and the ones that I think maybe might work, or that I'm intrigued by, or that I secretly wanted and yet never requested (Hello Paul Collins' Book of William) all go down to the office as well. Over a couple of months everything always seems to merge into one big pile of non order and then I know I have to spend an hour or two dealing with it.

Not that this is exactly torture, mind you. Two hours of sorting books is pretty much my zen happy place if you know what I mean!

Here's what I'm dealing with down the line for Bookslut:

June: Coming-of-age stories. This column is completely done.

July: Small adventures. I have five books reviewed for this column and I'm reading a sixth which I plan to include. This leaves room for another review, maybe - if I find a book that fits. Right now I would really like another book with a boy protagonist or with a minority protagonist to go in here. That was part of what I was looking for on Saturday but I'm still not sure. I also have to choose my "Cool Read" but I have a picture book idea for that.

August: Road trips. Right now I have three books planned for sure for this column - one of which is a nonfiction which delights me to no end. (The others split nicely into a boy book and girl book.) I obviously need more books here. I have one I requested from S&S that is due out this month (You Are Here by Jennifer E. Smith) and that would work with the theme but I don't have it yet. I have a few other possibilities - books that don't directly involve car trips but do involve travel and I might just broaden the theme so I can include them. (Two boats and a plane!) Not much reading done for this column yet though.

September: Fly me to the Moon. This is the Apollo 11 anniversary column, or all thing moonish. I know the actual anniversary is in July but I like doing fiction for summer reading and also I figure lots of kids will be talking about this when they go back to school in science class. (At least I hope they will - who knows.) I have four books for the column already including Tonya Lee Stone's fabulous Almost Astronauts. There's one book I'm waiting on from S&S: T-Minus, a graphic novel by Jim Ottaviani. I requested it, so it should arrive. I'm a big fan of Jim's work and really looking forward to what he does here. This column then, though largely unread, is already plotted.

October: Bradbury Weather. I have been doing an "October Country" column for this month in the past, but there aren't a lot of creepy/scary books out that I'm really interested in. (Call it vamp burnout.) So I thought I'd just broaden it to more of a Bradburyish type theme this year. Sideshow will fit nicely in here as would Liz Hand's upcoming YA title Wonderwall which I'm quite excited about. Holly Black also has book 2 of her Good Neighbors series due out this fall and the first graphic novel surprised me very much (loved the snark) so that is three titles thus far. More to come I'm sure.

November: Right now I have no theme for November although I'm leaning in two directions; one would be a "school dazed" type theme of books about coping with school pressures or set primarily in school with school issues, the second would be more a cool books for English Class which I've done in the past and would include a new YA Hemingway biography from Catherine Reef, Lady Macbeth's Daughter from the always fabulous Lisa Klein (loved her remake of Hamlet, Ophelia) and a Hamlet remake from John Marsden that just arrived here the other day with a note inside from Chris Crutcher stating "John Marsden has done what a legion of educators, my parents, a great number of more literate friends and my read-anything-you-can-get-your-hands-on grandmother failed to do. He has made me, for one glorious moment, love Shakespeare."

As someone who pretty much loathes Shakespeare (blame high school Brit Lit for that one) Crutcher's note made me pause long and hard and then put this book on the downstairs pile as opposed to right into donate. (And believe me, that is where it was going.) So brilliant marketing ploy on the part of Candlewick and a book that would fit perfectly into that English Class plan, if that is where I'm going. The Collins book on the Shakespeare portfolios, although published for adults, could also fit here if it reads as something high school teens would like. (And based on his other books, I bet it will.)

December is also up in the air so I could just make November "English Class" and December "School Dazed" and then move into January with "good winter reads". I'm really not sure. I generally try to make December a fun reading month - recommending several books that have nothing in common other than the fact that I enjoy them because I figure people are looking for that during that month. (So December could be "good reads" and January cold be "School Dazed" - am I really plotting a column for January 2010?????) It's hard to figure exactly what I want to do and much of this relies on what I have and what I receive. Right now the columns through September are pretty much set in stone, theme-wise (heck June, July and September are largely done as far as what specific titles will be reviewed in them). But then I see a book like Claire Zulkey's An Off Year, about Cecily who has always done the right thing and then shows up to college and decides not to go - setting off an unexpected gap year "during which Cecily must ask herself, for the first time, what does she really want to do with her life?" and I think, well, that could be a good book and I'd like to see how Zulkey handles that whole gap year idea. But where do you fit that book exactly? ("School Dazed" I suppose - but it depends on how the other books fit in there as well.)

So you can see why I go downstairs and spend a few hours sorting and thinking and reconsidering just what should go where.

On top of all this I'm still juggling broader groups over at Eclectica, where each quarter I have group reviews of biographies or poetry or history. In the current issue I have Biographies and Books About the Great Outdoors (with Jason Chin's fabulous Redwoods and a new Jane Yolen poetry title) and this summer I will have a picture books round-up and probably some "you don't know you're learning when you read these books" round-up. Maybe art titles too. I was putting together a historical picture books round-up and then realized that I have a bunch of Revolutionary War books on hand and several others on the way in the coming months, so I think October's issue will have a "Say You Want a Revolution, Mr. Adams" round-up. These reviews grow organically almost with me reviewing books continuously until I see that I have enough to submit as a unique group. A theme always emerges on its own which is very cool and low key at the same time. It's part of why I love writing for Eclectica (and I think why readers enjoy these collective reviews so much.)

So....that was my Saturday, or at least part of it. Several books went back upstairs to the donate bags as I realized that I was not going to get to them. Sometimes I will sit on a book for more than a year until I can figure out where it fits (Tamar was this way, as was Chameleon by Charles R Smith which is in my June column), but that is sort of rare. I tend to be ruthless just because I have to be - there are always more books showing up at my door. (If I really like a book then it will go somewhere, eventually - I guarantee that.) But still, however odd and subjective the system might be it does eventually work. One of the car books for August is over a year old and several of the fantasies in my May column are six months or so. I'm not really worried about release date but group cohesion. What's interesting is that when a book shows up I often have no idea how it will fit, until the next time I go downstairs, analyze the pile and then suddenly - it all works.

And I get to see my floor again too!