Shelf physics

I've long said that there needs to be a separate branch of physics that deals solely with bookshelves. Namely, their complete inability to hold a given quantity of books, regardless of the shelf's size. CM and I just went through the science fiction/fantasy section of our library, dusting and re-alphabetizing and so forth, because it's been a while and quite a few books were teetering precariously on the upper shelves. We pruned an entire shelf's worth of books from the library, moved several others to the YA Fiction and Folk & Fairy Tales sections, AND STILL THERE WAS NOT ENOUGH ROOM FOR OUR BOOKS ON THE SHELVES.

IT BOGGLES THE MIND!

And how can this be? (Weird little girlie: "For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!") Honestly, nobody knows. My theory: books twist space and time in ways not currently grokked by mankind. I think I've got to write a petition for a government grant to give this phenomenon further study. We would use this money to create a library big enough to hold all the books we want, and study whether the books swell to fit more than the available space.

It might need to be a rather sizable grant.