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How do you arrange your bookshelves?

Gerbil Chan

Gerbil Chan

New Member
Another thread has got me thinking. The types of books we own reveal a lot about ourselves; aspects of our personalities can be gleaned from what kind of books we collect and what kind of condition our books are in. I also think how we organize our bookshelves reveal a bit about ourselves. How do all of you catalog your shelves, if at all? I arrange most of my novels historically, by date and country. (The majority of my books are historical fiction)
 
Wow. That is really organized compared to my scary system. I have a heavy bookcase with a bureau on the bottom. It has tall shelves. It is full of my textbooks, hardcovers and other random tall books (like crochet books).

I have another heavy bookcase with tall shelves that has all of our EMS/Medical textbooks on it.

Two of my lighter duty bookcases have trade and mass market books on it, another has cookbooks on it.

Then there are the piles. I have piles of books in my bedroom and on the floor next to one of my bookcases. They are trades that I don't have room for on the shelves.

There is no order. Things just get crammed in wherever they fit! :eek:
 
Organizing books? Who needs it? Hee. I have one bookshelf with tall shelves and all my hardcover books get stuck in there. I have a shorter bookcase with tons of random paperbacks stuffed in however they fit, and the shelf underneath my TV has more paperbacks. There isn't any order. It takes me forever to find any specific book. That's why I normally just pull one off the shelf and start reading.
 
Lack of space stops me organising my books how I would like to (I must own thousands). All my childhood books are packed in boxes in the loft, or packed in boxes in a built-in wardrobe in my bedroom. Then I have an old-fashioned kitchen dresser type thing which has lots of space at the top behind glass doors. A lot of books are crammed in here, taking up every inch of space. I also have two more boxes of more recent books in my room.

Then there's my tall bookcase. This is where I keep my most recent books. The top shelf started off being just for my Pratchett books, and they are arranged in date of publication order from left to right. However, that is the end of my organisation! The other shelves are literally crammed with books, however I can fit them in. There is no more space at all, so now my newest are on the floor, which I do not like, as I like to keep my books pristine. I need a bigger place to live to fit my books in!
 
Separated by hardcover, paperback, fiction, & nonfiction. Put in alphabetical order by author's last name.

Otherwise: a bunch of random books randomly stacked in a corner.
 
Am I the only one who orders them by cover colour? Just because it looks nice. Otherwise, the cookbooks are next to my favourite chair, children's books are at knee-height, the more vulnerable books are at the top (in case my little nephews come to visit us), the encyclopedia is at the bottom (in case the shelves don't hold, at least they won't fall far!) and the work-related books are in the attic. I once tried putting my favourite books on one shelf, but that didn't work: there are too many. I also tried ordering them by height within colours or categories (again, because it looks nice). :rolleyes:
 
I consolidate them by topic. I was really into james joyce in high school, so I've got a whole shelf of just his stuff, then one for biographies, one for science and that sort of thing, one for politics and film criticism, and a couple for novels. I don't do much reading anymore, though. it must be my ADD. I watch a lot of movies, and my dvd collection has become somewhat more impressive than my book collection, tipping the scales somewhere around 500. I arrange those by director.
 
I usually try to group things by author and/or subject. If my books wouldn't keep multiplying and overrunning all the shelf space, the system would work perfectly. :D
 
Mine tend to be organised first by subject then by author (I group series together). It also depends on they type of book as to where it is stored - fiction tends to be in the bedroom, non-fiction goes in the dining room (along with Phil's) and reference books go in the computer room.
 
I sort them by size. Top shelf has the shortest books, bottom shelf has the tallest. I like to run my hands along the spines and see the progression from short to tall.

Luckily, I know my collection well enough to find whatever I'm looking for.
 
Most of my books are organized by either subject, author, or genre. For instance, to my left, right now, I have books on books and the history of science. At about 10 o'clock is a bookcase full of "serious fiction". At 11 o'clock is the oddities section. To my right, coffee table books, Shakespeare, and Borges. That's in this room.
The fiction, though, is also separated by size and then alphabetized by author.
 
My books are arranged accordingly to how much I want to access them, by genre (well, all the fantasy are together, same with the mysteries.) and by what colour the spine is! I keep books by the same author together, but my bookshelf is two-books deep, with books stacked on top of those books vertically, and with books stacked on top of the book shelf.
Then there are the rows of books on the floor between my desk and the door that don't fit on the shelf...
I think I need another bookshelf.
 
I have seven 6-shelved bookcases in my bedroom, four on the north near the bed, and three on the southwest and south. One is for Science Fiction, one for Fantasy, one for Children's Fiction, one for school textbooks, and three for nonfiction reference books. I group the fiction by author and by cover (paperbacks on one shelf, hardcovers on another). Tall books on the bottom, short books higher up.

There's room for expansion, but they are getting pretty full.
 
My problem is that I don't have enough shelves.

I have 4 book cases in my bedroom that are for my books exclusively. I keep all the reference books in one bookcase, except for an Oxford dictionary and Taber's medical dictionary that I keep on my desk. My non-fiction and travel books are kept on the tops of the other bookcases. The rest I try to shelve by author alphabetically.

It sounds organized but, unfortunately, the result is a lot of double stacking in front of other books and piles in front of the shelves on the floor. Then there's another stack of books on my bedside table and on the floor next to my bed! :eek:
 
Height is the crucial determining factor - those weirdly shaped books that are almost square in shape, or heaven forbid are longer than they are tall are the bane of my book-organising existance. Gur!
 
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