The Calvino Catalogue System

I'm reading If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, by Italo Calvino. I can't think of any other book which pokes so much good-natured fun at books, not to mention the people who read them and those who write them.

Right off, Calvino imagines a reader, befuddled in a bookshop. Picking a single title has left him paralysed. Maybe it's best to settle first upon a category. These are Calvino's categories, and I challenge any librarian or cataloguist to improve upon them.

• Books You Haven't Read
• Books You Needn't Read
• Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading
• Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written
• Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days are Numbered
• Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
• Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered
• Books Ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
• Books You Can Borrow from Somebody
• Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
• Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages
• Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success
• Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment
• Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case
• Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer
• Books You Need to Go With Other Books on Your Shelves
• Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
• Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Reread
• Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them
• New Books Whose Author or Subject Appeals to You
• New Books by Authors or on Subjects Not New (for you or in general)
• New Books by Authors or on Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you)

The reader in Calvino's novel naturally leaves the book shop with -- what else? -- Calvino's novel.