Since today is St. Patrick’s Day, I spent some time considering what to wear to avoid being pinched. Luckily it’s easy to decide, since I organize my clothes by color.
This made me think about the way I organize my books. I’m a bit picky about books, and I’ve tried a few different shelving approaches. Organizing by height (tallest to shortest) was one of my first attempts. As you might imagine, I found that this technique doesn’t work well for mass-market paperbacks.
Next, I tried organizing alphabetically by the book’s title. This method is less arbitrary than the height issue, but it still didn’t quite work for me. Books in a series by the same author ended up scattered among the other books, so they weren’t always easy to find.
I finally landed on alphabetical order by the author’s last name. There’s one exception—books in a series with recurring characters (such as the In Death series) are shelved in series order instead of alphabetically. I keep my to-be-read (TBR) books separate from the already-read-and-keeper books. They are also shelved alphabetically. I have about as many TBR books as I do keepers.
Obviously I need to get reading.
I haven’t considered organizing books by the color of the book cover. Anyone else do this, or some other method of organization I haven’t mentioned? If you don’t organize your books, how do you find the ones you want?
Speaking of organization, maybe I’ll dedicate some time to go through my closet and get rid of older clothes. If I’m lucky, I might clear more space for bookshelves . . .
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I shelve first by category – history, biography,reference, lit, contemporary fiction,etc., with subsections (romance, fantasy, mystery)), then alphabetical by author.
I mostly have paperbacks, which are shelved alpha by author (regardless of genre), then chronological order, except for series, which get shelved at the end of the author’s body of work in the proper order. I try to leave some air space between authors so I don’t have to reshelve a thousand books every time I buy a new one.
Reference books and hardcovers get the nice shelves in the living room because they look decorative and every visitor must behold my stylish literacy.
When Dean Koontz paperbacks used to be black with colored titles on the spines, I kept them in rainbow order and it was lovely, but it no longer works for me with the new covers, so he now receives the same boring system as everyone else…
Divided first into fiction and non- … then by author (but not alphabetical, just how they best fit in available shelf space). (King & Straub, for example, are adjacent with their collaboration as the divider. *grin* The OCD is mild … really.) TBRs are piled in strategic locations (bedside, bathside) to increase the likelihood that I’ll grab one & get sucked into its vortex.
Mine are divided first into nonfiction and non- then into paperback or hardcover. Paperback fiction are, for the most part shelved alphabetically by authors last name regardless of genre. Hardcover fiction are divided by genres and then alphabetically. Sad to say, though, the nonfiction isn’t organized at all. Just put wherever there is space on my nonfiction bookcase.
Mine are just sort of grouped by theme, and I never seem to have a problem putting my fingers on the one I need/want. But my whole world is–as my grandmother likes to say–a state of organized clutter.
Fiction is mostly alphabetical by author, because I learnt at a very early age how to use a library, and followed the same scheme at home when the collection got to more than a couple of feet of shelf space. But the Folio Society books have a bookcase of their own, and are mostly by theme. And then there’s the TBR stacks, which breed in dark corners…
Oh, and may I pimp LibraryThing? Online book cataloguing system, for those of you who haven’t run into it before. One of the things you can do is use tags to catalogue your books. It’s amazing how many people on LT tag their books with the physical location of the book — attic, garage, cellar, boyfriend’s house…
http://www.librarything.com/
I shelve by author and in sub sections, so category all together, reference books all together etc
Organize books….
Organize books….
Organize books….
Nope.
Doesn’t ring a bell.
Sorry.
I donate them to the library. They store them for me by, I believe, the dewey decimal system.
At home I have two piles. To Be Read and To Be Donated.
I love to organize my books. I do it like you, Alyssa, keepers alphabetically by author. But the TBR pile is usually a big mess, though every once in a while I try to organize it. My sister once did it by color, and it was very pretty, but it didn’t last long.
I do the same – by category, then by author last name, except when there’s a series. I also segregate anthologies and keep hard covers and trade paperbacks separate from mass market paperbacks.
Of course, if the books are numbered within a series, I keep them separate. For example, I have from about #100 to about #800 of the old Loveswepts. (I used to be a subscriber.) I created a library of sorts and finally have them all shelved in number order. They take up half of one wall. It’s just sad how many darn books I have! Which is one of the main reasons I switched to ebooks.
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