I can’t quite remember how this book got onto my TBR list but I’m always down for some history (especially on subjects I never thought of before) so I borrowed A Place for Everything and started reading.

If I was smarter/more hardworking, I would be writing this review in a way that the first letter of every paragraph is in alphabetical order, but that’s a bit beyond me right now. The book does go from A to I, and then to Y, though, so the letters that do appear are in alphabetical order. Essentially, Flanders looks at the history of organising books and ideas in Europe and the Anglo-American world to see how alphabetical order became the predominant mode of organising lists.

What I learnt from this book is that for most of written history, people simply did not have that many books to need a comprehensive ordering system! When they did want to order something, it was more natural to go in hierarchical order (e.g. “God” would come before “Angels” and “King” would come before “Commoners”). It’s something we still sometimes see today – in certain cases, when studying, we’ve probably found it’s better to list topics in terms of subjects, or in the biological sciences, according to a format like genus and family. But such lists can be rather subjective and as the printed word made books more common, and as trade began to grow, systems like the double-entry bookkeeping system and alphabetical order began to be seen as a more practical and neutral/natural way of ordering things.

To be honest, the subject matter could feel a little dry at times. Flanders is a good writer and she tries to be engaging, but alphabetical order isn’t all that interesting. I read the whole book, but I have to admit my attention wandered off here and there. Personally, I could see this being more useful as a reference text for someone looking to write a paper on the topic or a related topic, or if you’re really into organisational systems as a whole.

That said, I really appreciated the last chapter of the book. From the start, Flanders is very clear that her book is limited to Europe and the Anglo-American sphere due to language limitations. But she still brings in examples from other societies and I thought her contrast of the alphabet against the Japanese iroha system and the Chinese way of ordering things served as a good reminder that the “natural” way of ordering things by alphabetical order isn’t so natural to a large part of the world!

Overall, this is an informative book. I can’t say I was deeply engaged by the topic, but I did feel like I learnt a lot and it helped me think of organisational methods in a new light. I could see myself returning to this book if I ever want to look deeper into this topic!