This week’s question comes from A.V. Club Managing Editor Caitlin PenzeyMoog:
How do you organize your books?
Caitlin PenzeyMoog
I arrange my shelves by genre and topic. A single shelf is carved out for all-time favorites, where books I reread often live together regardless of affiliation. Having said that, as I critically examine my shelves to answer this question, the categories are very loose. A quick scan of my three shelves shows me clumps: sci-fi, short stories, poetry, plays, comics, socialist texts, spices/food/cooking, nonfiction, memoir, random esoterica. But looking closer, I realize a few shelves are organized in the loosest sense around 19th- and 20th-century literature and contemporary lit—fiction sorted by date. And I’m forced to admit other categories are porous, too. Thurber’s Dogs is in the short story section, though it might belong one shelf over, in memoir. For some reason I don’t have a fantasy shelf, with sets of books by Tolkien, Le Guin, Vance, Pullman, and Martin collected by author but no where close to residing together. Hard-boiled detective novels could probably occupy a shelf together, but they’re wherever. When I arranged the shelves more than two years ago, after moving into a new apartment, I had a plan for topics to bleed into each other; hence the neighborly arrangement of short stories, poetry, and plays, and other nonfiction rubbing shoulders with memoir. All in all, my conclusion is that it doesn’t matter too much how anyone organizes their shelves, and worrying too much about which book belongs where leads to madness. Though I do think alphabetizing is a morally wrong and antithetically banal sorting method.
Laura Adamczyk
At this point, my scheme is loose; it’s wild and woolly. I’ve got too many books coming in, and not enough going out, and organization is suffering. But there is a kind of scheme. On the top row of my main bookshelf are some of my favorite books and hardbacks whose covers I like, mostly fiction, in alphabetical order. The rest on the bookshelf is loosely arranged by genre and size (there are a bunch of little paperbacks from Dorothy and Dalkey Archive that stack nicely together). The coffee table hosts three or more stacks at any given time, usually: by the designer Leonard Koren, because his books are nice physical objects and are possible to dip in and out of; a few novels that I will, at some point, read for an ongoing project; and then some magazines and literary journals and maybe a few recently published books. And, now, along the wall next to the bookshelf, in two wobbly stacks that grow more and more unstable the taller they grow, are a lot of recently read and to-read books. The system, as it were, is controlled chaos. Were you to ask me for a particular title, I do not believe it would take me more than a day to find it.
Laura M. Browning
I worked at Borders for six years, which cemented my natural tendencies toward alphabetization. I kept that up for years and years: Everything (not just books, but also CDs, when I used to accumulate those, and spices, and anything else with a name) was neatly alphabetized by author’s last name. When I had multiple books by the same author, they were then alphabetized by title, or chronologically for series like Harry Potter. It was perfect. But at some point I realized I was never going to have a big sprawling house with a big sprawling library, the kind with a ladder to get to the upper stacks and some nice cozy chairs, and I made a very hard decision. Given that I live in a relatively small space, and my bookshelves are in my dining and living rooms, the visual impact of organizing my books by color was pretty appealing. I tried it out for a couple months, which has turned into forever. I don’t often need to go and find a specific book, and I keep my most urgent stack of books to read on a separate shelf anyway. Reorganizing also forced me to get rid of some (it’s fine! there is no reason to be a person who can’t part with her books!), so my current shelves are a nicely curated rainbow of books that I love or want to read, not a towering disorganized monstrosity that taunts me for not reading more.
Randall Colburn
I’m not positive why I started doing this, but years ago I began arranging my books by height, with my tallest, most ornate volumes residing to the far left of a shelf, where they would cascade downward into smaller, flimsier paperbacks. I own a lot of plays and dime-style paperbacks, so I suppose I just kind of hated the ways they would disappear in between two thicker, wider tomes. I also, I suppose, take an aesthetic pleasure in seeing all my colorful Samuel French scripts placed side-by-side. The same goes for my cheap Pocket Books editions of Stephen King’s library, which I bought as a kid and refuse to upgrade. I liked the way they look as a bunch and, for a while at least, I liked the descending nature of my shelves. All this said, I Marie Kondo’d the majority of my physical books a few years ago and currently own just one small, two-tiered bookshelf. As such, I’ve gotten a bit lax in my modes of organization. Blame my Kindle.
Nick Wanserski
I, being something of a lazy and unfocused person, don’t have any sort of formal book-organizing system. But I know myself well enough to know that there’s a semi-conscious method to my book arrangement. John Waters famously stated, “If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them.” His full quote expands to say that you can (fuck them) once they appreciate reading. Basically, books are another form of social currency, and I’m not above arranging mine to maximize that. I highlight the books I like and obscure the ones I don’t. Just like impulse buys are perfectly calibrated at check-out counters to be at eye-level, I’m going to find a good spot for Akira Kurosawa’s Ran storyboards and screenplay and maybe try and tuck our house copy of Twilight off in a lower corner. Look, I’m not proud of it. It’s both petty vanity and just a dumb way to try to shape people’s perceptions who know better anyway. But as long as books double as objet d’art for the home, I’m going to try and display our best pieces.
Sam Barsanti
I don’t have a central bookshelf that can hold everything, but I have a simple system for my many smaller bookshelves: For comics, I arrange them alphabetically and by publisher, since it would be complete and utter madness to put my Hawkeye books anywhere near my Green Arrow books (they have absolutely nothing in common!). Plus, comics tend to have nice, complimentary art on the spines that makes them look nice together. As for my regular books, the ones that don’t normally have pictures, I just throw them all in a big messy pile, shove that ugly pile onto a shelf of its own where it can’t hurt anyone, and then forget what is there until I buy more books and need to make room. “I forgot I bought this, I can’t believe I never read it,” is a common thing to hear me say when I’m arranging my books, and perhaps someday I’ll realize that the reason I keep forgetting what books I have is because I throw them in a stupid pile.
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I have my books organized historiographically. Because all literature, be it fictional or non, reflects a certain time and place. Non-fiction is obvious, but even fiction has elements of history, either by being set in a historical period, or being a record of a contemporaneous time. Therefore my self does not adhere to any artificial genre or classification, simply a linear chronology. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, being a work set in the 15th century, sits near works by Shakespeare, while The Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird, are side by side with A Moveable Feast.
How do you deal with books that span a long time period, like say Orlando? Do you tear them up and disperse individual chunks of pages on different shelves?
My solution for this is to ask how that book addresses a particular period in time, and where it is most informative.
For example, my biography on Jackson Pollock, despite spanning the years 1912-1956, is situated in the 1940s section of my “library” because that is the period during which Pollock has greatest historical relevance in terms of his importance to the development of abstraction in art.
Likewise, my biography of Van Gogh is in the 1880s section because that is where he attained maturity as an artist. But someone like Queen Victoria, who by her very ascension to the throne marked the beginning of an age in and of itself that was defined by her very rule, she is situated in the mid 1830s section, at the beginning of her reign, and the book thereby “spans” the following years, as a kind of broader diegesis into which other books that deal with the Jacksonian era, or the industrial revolution, are subsets.
So where does “The Simarillion” sit?
Dick: I guess it looks as if you’re reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?Rob: No…Dick: Not alphabetical…Rob: Nope…Dick: What?Rob: Autobiographical.Dick: No fucking way.Rob: Yep. Let me tell ya how I got from Deep Purple to Howlin’ Wolf in just 25 moods. And, if I want to find the song “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the Fall of 1983 pile – but, didn’t give it to them for personal reasons.Dick: That sounds…Rob: Comforting.Dick: Yes.Rob: It is.
I am a by size organizer. Tallest books on the bottom shelf, tallest on the left and also, if a book sticks out too far from the others, I’ll move it to a place where it fits better. Paperbacks on the top shelf. It’s because of Earthquakes, I organize everything in my life that way. Cereal on the top shelf, soup cans on the lower shelf etc.
“Organize”?
“Books”?
“You”?
“Pelvic”?
*record scratch sound effect*
[PLAYS “I FEEL GOOD”]
“Hambone?”
Who ever heard of making an organ out of books? Organs are made from pipes, silly!
Well, the intestines, sure.
I mean, if someone made me actually try, I was thinking “Bach” more than “transplant,” but if you like getting squishy don’t lemme stop you. 🙂
Used to have them organized by fiction and nonfiction and then by author. Now they’re color coordinated in my IKEA Kallux bookshelf (in the checkerboard-patterned boxes that don’t have board games). The books not on those shelves are a mishmash and unorganized. When I move next month, probably will do a color again with names for the books that don’t fit. Also, something I noticed when going by color: I don’t have nearly enough green and purple spined books. Everything is orange and red and yellow, which I suppose makes sense since bright colors pop out on a store shelf.
At this point, I just fit them where I can. I can generally remember where most of them are based on when I bought them, if they’re hardcover or paperback, size, and whether I liked it a lot (in which case it gets displayed more prominently).
“Where there is space, fill it with books.” is the maxim I live by, much to the chagrin of my wife. She did set up a bookshelf on one wall and had me place the fiction by author in that section. This would have been a good system to start with, but I bought a bunch more books at a Rummage Sale and well…I subscribe to the organized chaos model as well. I can generally find what I am looking for fairly quickly.
I get books at library sales every summer. I love the serendipity of it.
Amazon marketplace has been a godsend. Literally anything I’ve ever wanted, no matter when published, shipped from some small bookseller across the country that I would never have otherwise come across.“You know, I’ve always meant to read Ellroy’s LA Quartet.”—Three days later, four hardbacks from three sellers for $30 total
I do the same thing at used book stores. I’ve found some crazy, wonderful stuff I never otherwise would have discovered. So much more fun than a shitty Amazon algorithm.
What I love about the library sales is that something really awesome could be stuck in with total crap. There is no organization other an fiction/non-fiction, and they keep filling the tables all day long. Everything is a dollar, expect near the end of the day when you can fill your bag for a dollar.
Library sales are my main source of books. Usually enough to get a good selection, super cheap, and the money goes towards a good cause! I love it
Before I had kids, if I had a weekend day where I didn’t have plans, I’d check out https://booksalefinder.com/, which is one of the worst-looking websites still in operation, but has a pretty comprehensive list of library/rummage book sales listed by region. Got lots of great stuff that way.
Wow. This is dangerous stuff for someone like me.
My partner and I organize our fiction into four categories – things we’ve both read, things I’ve read but she hasn’t, vice versa, and things neither of us has read. I don’t love it as a system but it has advantages. Nonfiction is organized by topic/form, although it can often be rough (e.g. the distinction between “social science/current events” and “memoir”). I used to organize by publisher, at least for those with distinctive spines (e.g. NYRB, Vintage International) and for series. But that obviously resulted in a lot with no obvious organizational principle, which were just shelved randomly afterwards.
By how well they fit into the garbage can.I’m not keeping stuff I’ve already read and know I’ll likely never read again.
That’s awesome. Only mine is both the crazy amount of books on bookshelves AND a library of 800+ titles on Audible. No Kindle yet for me.
I am so grateful for e-readers. I have over 1,200 titles on it. I could build house of books if they were in physical form. ( . . . Or more likely, die when a tower of them crash down on me.)
My tendinitis loves my Kindle.
And here I thought 150 books on my ebook reader are much… 🙂
In my reader app I hit ‘sort by author’…
Wily nily. That’s how I organize my books. It would horrify a librarian to be sure.
Last book I read gets slotted in wherever it will fit.
like liquor. High end on top shelf. Paperbacks on the bottom shelf.
Re: How Do You Organize Your Books?Randomly, though sorta subject/theme related, & whatever fits on the bookshelf. That’s my next home-project. Book organization. Have some keepers & some stuff that should be tossed/replaced. Reference Books are keepers. The older, the better. Usually.
1. These look like the collections of people who voraciously consume reading material, so bravo2. You both need to get some fresh paint on that trim
True. Thx for responding 🙂 Regards.
Shoutout the softcover Hebrew-English dictionary from Jewish day school. Respect.
We’re blood brothers. 🙂
Or… ga… what? I don’t even know how you’d begin making an organ out of books. Who ever heard of such a thing???
The monkey & me 😉
Please stop taking pictures of my room.
By weight. Duh.
Of author. George RR Martin at one end, Jesus at the other!
I am a Library of Congress girl. I use libib to catalogue all the books I own, and then sort by LCCN, so things end up pretty much organized by subject area and then alphabetical by author. I do have a separate shelf in my living room for my “to read” list. After I read a book, I decide if it’s one I want to keep or give away (I have a Little Free Library in my front yard that gets everything I don’t insist on keeping), and the rest get scanned into libib and then filed away by LCCN.I might be a little type A.
I have them organized by category (fiction, anthology, history, science, philosophy, feminist theory, horse care and training) then alphabetically by author. Some authors have special sections if I have a lot of stuff by them (e.g. Murakami).
This degree of organization came about when I had the extremely frustrating experience of not being able to put my hands on a book that I know I own(ed). I never found that damn book, but I can put my hands on any other book in the house.
That’s the way to go. I’ve got a shelf for George R.R. Martin, ‘cause I’m fanatical like that, then another shelf for classics, another for non-fiction that I really need to fill, a shelf full of genre fiction that I’ve almost stocked. And everything is alphabetized; I’ve got my Shakespeare right next to my Shelley right next to my Stoker right before my Tolkien.Eventually, my dream of wall-to-wall book shelves will finally come true!
same!
Almost always in the manner of a person with far more books than space for them. Sometimes I’ll play around and make a fiction section or something, but I also appreciate randomness and disorder a lot more than most people I know do.
Chronological by earliest significant year
I put them on bookshelves where they fit. … Did I just win book organizing?
The only proper way to organize books is in a pile in a properly dug out firepit!But seriously I’ve actually mostly eliminated my physical book inventory. The only books I prefer to own are novels or a handful of really good non-fiction entries. Basically anything I might read multiple times and occasionally want to pick up on a lark. Like, once every two or three years I’ll wake up in the morning and decide “I want to read The Stand again!”Having them all be digital means I can access them from anywhere, and I think I might be one of the few human beings on the planet that enjoys reading books on his phone.Everything else I get at the library.
by color
Chronological. The old ones are at the bottom, and the ones I just bought are at the top.
I have a very personal organization by vague associations. So, stuff I think of as “academic” has its own bookshelf. That’s where you find the Norton Shakespeare tome, like, nine dictionaries, ten pound literature anthologies, the MLA handbook, Strunk and White, but books on politics and memoirs also belong there, for some reason. Then I’ve got bookshelves with all sorts of technical manuals and training materials. Then there’s the fiction bookshelves, which are arranged by . . . I dunno. Roughly the mood of the reading experience, I guess. Hunter S. Thompson shares a shelf with Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk and Douglas Copeland go together, along with a smattering of other authors that give me a similar vibe. There’s the “batshit twisted” section full of weird titles like “Razor Wire Pubic Hair”, horror with Clive Barker and similar authors, and Stephen King’s got two full rows to himself. Then a whole other bookshelf that’s pretty much just dedicated to hardboiled crime novels, mixed with my “to read” shelf that’s always at least half full because I can’t stop myself from buying another half-dozen books every week or so.
Good thing I’ve got two mostly empty bookshelves waiting in reserve.
What’s a book?/sI organize by last read, as in the last book I read goes at the end of my shelf.
Other than a separation between books I have read and books I haven’t read yet (a much bigger stack), they are basically organized by the size of the shelf on which I am placing them.
By size and how easily they fit on each shelf. The biggest books go on the shelf with the most room.
By subject: a music section, a movies section, a political section, biographies, etc. I can’t say this is a fascinating enough subject for an extensive article, but that’s how I do it.
I no longer keep books.No, seriously. I have a handful that are meaningful, but following two cross country moves and no longer having mom’s attic for storage and now living in a small loft, I just don’t keep them anymore. I rely highly on the library or, if I buy a book at an airport or a used book sale something, I pass it along/give it away as soon as I’ve read it. I have given away literally hundreds of books. It’s liberating and it makes my heart happy.My 6yo, on the other hand, could open a library in his bedroom. And those I arrange by type (chapter books vs kid books, paperbacks vs hardcover) and size (height). His bookshelves are beautiful but I’m fucked because I like everything back the way I like it so I am the only one who puts them away. Whomp.
Or-ga-nize? Oh, la-dee-dah. So fancy with your shelves! I just have a heap of books by my bed that I intend to read at some point before they fall on me and crush me.
Books are by the Dewey Decimal system, since at this point all the new books I bring into my home are from the library.
Records, on the other hand are Numero Collections -> Box Sets -> Everything else alphabetically with letter cards and replace record cards.
Dewey Decimal system. My bookshelf is the nearest library.
Alphabetically by writer’s last name, then titles by the same writer chronologically by publication date. Boring, perhaps, but organized!
That’s amateur hour. I organize my books alphabetically by total content — you know, add up all the A’s in the book, the B’s, on down to Z, divide by the total letters in the book to get the percentage of letters represented by each, and from there you assign numbers sequentially (A=1, B=2 and so on) and multiply by the percentages for each letter, then organize the books lowest score to highest score, to ensure that the books that use the earlier letters in the alphabet come first, and the ones that go heavier on the U’s and W’s are at the end of the shelf! It just makes sense.
Me too! Interestingly, the results are the same as alphabetical.
I have a mix (and two full book shelves). First it’s by genre: IE I have a bunch of YA books from the late 70’s and 80’s that I kept from when I was a kid. There’s another shelf filled with music bio books like the ‘Please Kill Me’ book, The Mats book and of course every Clash and Big Star book known to man.I also have my ‘author’ shelves where if I have more than say 2 books of an author, they’ll get lumped together. James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard, Terry Pratchett, Charles Bukowski and Larry McMurtry all have their own little spots. As I’m writing this I realize I need to get a better, more unified approach.
After separating fiction, nonfiction, and comics, I categorize it by the real last name of the author, not his or her pen name, and then chronologically by the order in which they were written. If it overlaps or is a collection, I try to order by when the bulk of the material is published.Sadly, I’m a collector and my shelves are rather full, so there’s a lot of rearranging with every new purchase.
In my office at the university I actually have things sorted by category – shelves for theory, historical texts, fiction, poetry, graphic texts, etc., with a separate bookcase for textbooks and handbooks. At home I have one bookcase filled with favorite authors and pretty much everything else just gets crammed wherever there’s space. So if you need me to find a Terry Pratchett book that’s easy. If you want me to find my copy of like Gone Girl that’s going to take awhile. It’s a mess.
1. Subject matter/Genre—One shelf is all History, one shelf is all Plays, one shelf is My Favorite Books regardless of being fiction or non-fiction. etc.
2. Height going from tallest to shortest, left to right.
3. All series together. I.E. all my Harry Potters in a row, all my LOTR in a row, and I apply this to my graphic novels as well as Sam does, though not in alphabetical order, but in order of how they came out chronologically so if you read them in order, you get the full story as how it was meant to be read. I also have separate shelves for Marvel, DC. and Other publishers. Sams right that with graphic novels they often have corresponding art and numbers on the spine that make them look good together on the shelf.
This works for me.
alphabetically by the author’s last name. if i have more than one book by the same author, they’re organized alphabetically by title (unless it’s a series then obviously it’s chronically).
After working at a library in high school, I’ve had about all I can take of painstaking book organization. I shelve ‘em where they fit.
My bedroom bookcase is devoted to fantasy and science fiction, and then— oh, wait, that’s it.
I moved 3 times in 2 years, and when I decided to move out of state I decided I was done with humping around dozens of boxes of books. I sold, donated, and gave away about 4/5 of my library. I kept books with sentimental value, books that would be difficult to replace, books that seemed unlikely to be released in e-editions, cookbooks and photography books. What’s left gets loosely bundled by genre, with authors grouped together; I’m not particular and there isn’t so many books that it’s hard to find anything I’m looking for.I tried reading just from the library after that and I held out for about a year, but between my weird issues with needing to own things and my need for instant gratification (I live in a very small southern town and although I can get most books through inter-library loan, it can take weeks), I switched to e-books about a decade ago, first with a Nook and then, once I confirmed I would be able to access my Nook library on a Kindle, to one of those. My collection titles are pretty straightforward: 19th, 20th, and 21st century literature; horror/sci fi/fantasy; YA; non-fiction; history; true crime (I read enough for it to merit its own category); biographies and autobiographies; mysteries and thrillers.
I’m normally not a hoarder, but I get pretty much everything in hardback and shelve it when done. I haven’t moved in more than a decade and can’t imagine what the moving cost of my library would be at this point.
We recently moved and I was prepared to get rid of some books to make it easier until my husband said these magic words: “Just throw them in boxes. I’ll have the guys move them.”
I kept everything but I did left a lot in boxes. Not everything needs to be displayed, and certainly not The 2002 Witch’s Almanac. I just can’t bear to throw books away. What if they miss me?
On a full wall of bookshelves, categorized by shelf: Stephen King books. John Le Carre and other classic spy books. Poetry. “Classic”/”canonical” literature. Fancy old 19th century books. Big hardback anthologies. Classic children’s chapter books. Classic children’s picture books. Contemporary fiction (lighter colored). Contemporary fiction (darker colored). Glossy hardback newer releases. Biographies. Wife’s fiction books. Wife’s non-fiction and childcare books. Business/finance books and other hand-me-downs from dad. Calvin and Hobbes and Far Side collections, along with assorted college textbooks. Photo albums and other memorabilia. Board games and puzzles.
At the moment?ComicsTana FrenchJane Austen
In my game room on my Spider-man theater chair in a totes bag and also some in my standing closet in said game room and other’s lying on a bench.Basically I have tons of books but haven’t really read any since I was like 25… That’s 20 years ago.
I separate them by type then I organize them alphabetically by author. Reference and art books, then I move to graphic novels then regular books.
Books are touchy b/c of their wildly varying dimensions. Clustered by non-fiction, fiction and comic (graphic novels) in the shelves that accommodate their basic size variations.
LPs belong alphabetical by artist with compilations at the end. No genre sections. I go so far as to file soundtracks under the composer’s name but I could accept them after compilations.
Like Laura M. Browning, I worked at Borders for several years, and not only do I organize my books alphabetically like some kind of moral monster of banality, I bring all of them forward to the lip of the shelf. I was a bookseller who would occasionally shelve, but I was told by an older shelver who had worked at Borders for decades at that point that it was one of the things that made Borders inherently better than Barnes & Noble, For whatever reason, I’ve done it ever since. They also let you be tattooed and pierced and wear whatever you felt most comfortable in and gave benefits to same-sex partners of employees, at least by the mid-aughts. It was the closest I ever got to my adolescent Empire Records dream, and honestly, it was even better than just a record store. RIP Borders.
i have mine organized by size because i have a bunch of shelves passed to me by family (including one built by my great grandfather and one built by my wife) and they did the ‘lowest shelf is biggest and they get smaller as you go up’ plan
That color method is tight, especially if they’re in a living space in your house or apt. Never thought of it.
I group all the fiction together by author, but classify the non-fiction stuff pretty finely—hell, my poetry section is separated into epic and lyric! Most sections are in alphabetical order by author …but for some reason it feels more natural to arrange drama chronologically, starting with Aeschylus and ending with Shaffer & Stoppard.
So seriously, nobody has a Kindle?
This week’s question comes from A.V. Club Managing Editor Caitlin PenzeyMoog:How do you organize your books?I typically use a shelf, but my kids favor the “my floor is a bookshelf” philosophy.”
How do you organize your books?
Every human being on planet Earth: In the most pretentious way possible.
Relevant quote: “Basically, books are another form of social currency”
if anyone says “by color” you should kill yourself
I have pretty much one book shelf of books. But, I refer to it as “the shelf of friends”. I’ve moved too much lately to have boxes of books that I haven’t read or will never read again. For everything else I need, there are ebooks and libraries. (forgive the crappy photo quality, it’s an old photo and I’m typing this at work and don’t feel like I’m waiting until I’m home to take a new one)Basically like this. Top shelf of books is “My Treasues”. This includes my collection of James Herriot books that belonged to my grandma, first editions of the My Friend Flicka series, and some old books of fairy tales (my oldest is a gorgeously illustrated book of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales from 1890).Next shelf and a half are all Terry Pratchett. Half of the third shelf is some Mercedes Lackey, Star Wars, and Phillip Pullman. Bottom shelf is a lot more YA books, some books I read in college and enjoyed (like Ovid’s Metamorphosis and Jane Austen), and some movies. Since this picture was taken, I have acquired a lot of small prints from local artists and put them on the shelves, so except the top shelf you can’t even really see the books that I do have. But, they are in there.
Fiction is alphabetized by author. Nonfiction is arranged by subject matter. I have different shelves and/or sections for different subjects. History is in chronological order. Then I have kids books on separate shelves arranged by reading level and who needs to reach it. Storybooks (unorganized) at the bottom, middle school/YA at the top. And of course I have a stack by my bed.
Where they fit on the shelf, so it is a voyage of discovery every time I have to find a specific book. But the beauty of it is I always discover a gem I’ve forgotten about. We have two large bookcases in our dining room, a book area in the spare room and a bookcase in our bedroom. I will say that our album collection (1300+) somewhat organized by artist, so maybe there’s hope?
Ugh, you people are killing me! The LC call number is right there on the copyright page!
Not even nearly always.
How do you organize your books?
Barely.
My wife and I keep our collections separate. I break my non-fiction down by category and then alphabetical except for books such as biographies which are by the subject and books about specific movies which are by the title of the film. Art and photography monographs are by artist/photographer.Fiction is broken down by genres: classics (somewhat arbitrarily), miscellaneous “straight” fiction, horror, science fiction and fantasy. I have small sub-sections for books I read in junior high and high school as well as one for my odd little hobby devoted to mid-century novels that were turned into films (“Leave Her To Heaven”, “Dragonwyck”, “The Spiral Staircase”, etc.) I like to highlight a lot of my sub-sections by placing an appropriate small toy on the shelf in front of it (a Universal monster in front of horror, some vintage plastic astronauts in front of sci-fi and so on.)I used to keep my album collection organized chronologically by when I bought the record and could find any title in seconds because I love music that much that I can remember buying an album like it was a birthday or Christmas. I only stopped doing that after my wife and I started living together because she couldn’t find anything in my collection. My film collection, curiously, is strictly alphabetical by title because my love for movies is so intense I can’t conceive of them as genres or categories. I just love them all as movies.
Closest to my desk: reference and Sanskrit
Closest to my bed: unread
Closest to the door: stuff i don’t mind if friends borrow and don’t return
By dimensions, so I can fit more onto the shelves. If I didn’t do it that way I wouldn’t have the space for even half my books.
I have two schemes: fiction I have on a set of shelves I built into an alcove (this being NYC there are some odd layouts in 50s-era buildings) but I alphabetize by author for those. I have a bunch of graphic novels I stack separately, and my “classics” (Shakespeare, the Greeks, that kind of thing) I also have arranged at the end of the fiction sections.
My non fiction I arrange loosely by subject. I have all my old college science texts together, for example.
Our house contains sixteen bookshelves, plus floor piles. The shelves are on a five layered sorting system: whose book (mine or the Mister’s, because we might be married but these are books we’re talking about)? Have I read it yet (unread books have their own bookshelf so we don’t forget to read them)? What’s it about (fiction/non, plus genre for my books)? Who wrote it? When?And with that, all books can be found. Except the floor piles. They just multiply like fungal growths. We don’t talk about them.
I really need to re-organize my books, because I had an organization method that made sense, and I ended up eventually forgetting what that was and just cramming things in wherever they fit. I had a period where I only bought comics, but I’m trying to keep up with what’s happening with novels and nonfiction and so on now as well.
With my comics, I tried to put all the European comics together (Tintin, Corto Maltese), all the DC/Vertigo comics organized alphabetically by character, all the Marvel ones grouped the same way, then ‘indie’ comics by publisher (IDW, Boom!, Dark Horse). Floppy issues go in a magazine organizer— I only really venture to a comic book store to get floppies on Free Comic Book Day and then just buy trades the rest of the year, so it’s mostly free issues. I should really give most of them to friends, particularly the ones about characters that don’t grab me (or that I know nothing about), ones they might appreciate more than I do. Manga I just organized by genre (horror, comedy, magical girl, shonen action), with stuff by the same author placed together.The novels I’ve been reading are almost all fantasy, so it’s Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Diana Wynne Jones, The Last Unicorn, and a Dragonriders of Pern short story collection I’ve never read (I have no idea where to start with that series, I got it as a gift and I know zero about it) on the same shelf.
“For comics”The question was about books. ::ducks::
Weight and series. Thick Stephen King hardcovers go on the bottom shelves and my Prachett softcovers go on top.Also I organized more than half my collection into boxes and donated them last month. Fuck you 10 boxes of books that I haven’t touched in over 10 years, Kindle Fire is better than all of you!
The Philip K. Dick books on one shelf, the non-Dick books on another.
By genre/type then author. Randos are placed according to size. Most of my bookshelves are the wooden folding type so big books go on the end to hold everything in.
The Keep pile, which is generally arranged by stackable size.
The Little-Library pile.
I have one bookcase that’s just for autographed books. (It’s genuinely amazing how many of those turn up in thrift stores.) Those are alphabetized by author’s last name. The rest of my stuff is mostly by subject, and isn’t in any particular order within a category, although I do try to keep authors together. And of course, there are some oversized doorstop books that live on the bottom shelf, because the two volume Oxford Unabridged is NOT something I want to have fall on my head from above. It would flatten me like Wile E. Coyote.