The Day Maria Caught Me Reorganising Her Books

People have been asking me a very strange question recently.

“Pip,” they say, usually with the cautious tone humans use when they are about to ask something deeply unreasonable, “do you actually help Maria around the workshop?”

The answer is obviously yes.

I am an essential member of the Macarons Manuscripts team. I inspect bookmarks for structural integrity, supervise the preparation of hot chocolate, ensure every parcel contains the correct amount of dragon magic and maintain general morale by sitting in places Maria was definitely about to use.

I also provide expert advice.

Maria does not always ask for this advice, but that is hardly my fault.

Sometimes genius simply arrives uninvited.

And occasionally, when the workshop is quiet and nobody is watching, I conduct extremely important literary research.

Which is exactly what I was doing last Tuesday.

☕ The Opportunity

Maria had gone downstairs to make a cup of tea.

Most people would use this opportunity to steal a biscuit, open a suspicious parcel or investigate whether the good chocolate had been hidden somewhere new.

Not me.

I had noticed something deeply concerning.

Her books were not organised properly.

Some people arrange books alphabetically. Some organise them by colour. Some use genre, author or publication date. Very serious readers sometimes develop systems involving spreadsheets, labels and levels of control normally reserved for air traffic.

Maria, however, appeared to have absolutely no system whatsoever.

Fantasy was next to thrillers. Romance was beside history. A cookbook was somehow sharing a shelf with a horror novel, which felt less like organisation and more like a warning.

There were books standing upright, books lying flat and one book balanced across the top as though it had simply given up.

Frankly, it was chaos.

Being a responsible dragon, I decided to help.

📚 The New and Improved System

I began by creating what I considered the perfect set of categories.

There were books that made me cry, books that made me laugh, books that ruined my emotional stability and books containing dragons who deserved considerably more page time.

I also created special sections for books I planned to borrow permanently and books featuring particularly handsome morally grey heroes.

Simple. Logical. Elegant.

More importantly, every category was emotionally honest.

Why should a book be filed under “Fantasy” when it could be filed under “Made Me Stare at the Wall for Forty Minutes”?

Why should a romance novel sit quietly under an author's surname when everyone knows it belongs in “People Who Need Therapy but Are Very Attractive”?

This is the sort of innovation librarians have been avoiding for years.

About forty-five minutes later, I was halfway through Shelf Three and extremely pleased with myself.

Everything finally made sense.

Then I heard footsteps.

🚪 Maria Returns

Maria walked into the room carrying her tea.

She looked at the shelves.

She looked at me.

She looked back at the shelves.

There was a very long silence.

It was the sort of silence that suggested she was either deeply impressed or attempting to count backwards from ten.

Finally, she asked, “Pip... why is my cookbook next to Fourth Wing?”

I explained patiently.

“It is in the section called ‘Things I'd Happily Read While Eating Cake.’”

She did not seem convinced.

Then she noticed that I had also moved her bookmark collection.

“They're organised by emotional damage now,” I announced proudly.

Again, she was not impressed.

She picked up one of my labels and frowned.

“What does this mean?”

I glanced over.

“Oh. That is ‘Books That Absolutely Betrayed Me.’”

Apparently, this is not considered a recognised library category.

Who knew?

🫖 The Aftermath

Maria spent the next two hours putting everything back exactly where it had been.

Which seemed like a waste.

My system was objectively better.

I know this because I could immediately find every dragon book, every cosy fantasy and every title containing a man with a tragic past and an alarming number of knives.

Maria could not.

I think that speaks for itself.