This week’s question: How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on?
How very appropriate as a question for me! I am smack in the middle of reorganizing all of my bookshelves, which previously fell under the “wherever it fits” system, often coupled with the “oh well, the floor is good enough” method of shelving. So the other day I did a book purge, and now I am attempting to reorganize everything. Step one was to take all of the non-book material off my shelves:
… which left me with nowhere to sleep, but shelves that looked something like this:
Now, of course, comes the difficult part: actually recategorizing and organizing everything. For now, I’m pulling books off the shelves one genre at a time and putting them in piles:
Right now my shelves are about halfway empty, and I still have some of the bigger genres to take off. Right now Canadian Lit and Mystery have two piles each; Science Fiction and Children’s Lit will probably run to three apiece. And once everything’s off, everything wil go back on again — but in a much more sensible fashion! I’ll be shelving by genre and then alphabetically by author within each genre. (Which means I don’t know how I’ll cope when I have to add books, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it).
How do you arrange everything? Ever had to start over, like me?
Oh, yeah. I’ve started over many times. I generally just divide everything into fiction/nonfiction categories and then shelve most of it alphabetically by author’s last name. But the hubby has a more complicated system for his books. I like to keep things as simple as possible – with just a bit of chaos thrown in to make it interesting.
JLS Hall’s latest blog post:Tuesday Thingers: Swap This Book
You’ll be so happy once you’ve finished. My response is here:
http://bookcritiques.blogspot.com/2009/02/booking-through-thursday-storage.html
Sally’s latest blog post:Spring of Candy Apples by Debbie Viguié
I’m in the middle of reorganising too. I got my TBR case done (I did it by colour), then I got sick and haven’t felt well in over a month. So all my other books are either in random piles on the shelves or on my floor. Not good!
Eva’s latest blog post:Laurie King’s Guest Post
Guest room: natural history; English literature and miscellanea; humour
Study: art; cinema; English language; travel; computing; comics; comics; comics
My bedroom: history; graphic arts; graphic novels
Living room: natural history
Dining room: cookery
And then there’s all that stuff piled up in the corner over there…
Kevin’s latest blog post:Digging in
Wow, good luck on your reorganizational project! That seems like a lot of fun! I organize alphabetically by author, too, but I just lump all genres together.
claire’s latest blog post:What My Shelves Look Like
Eva — by colour! I’ve done it by height — which, I wonder, is the crazier?
By genre, then within genre by height/depth. It is difficult to integrate new books into a system unless you leave space. I’ve often had organized shelves, then a “recently purchased and read” bookcase which isn’t integrated into the collection until I move – which is when i re-organize because everything is off the shelves anyhow.
Currently, I don’t have enough shelf-space. I’m hoping for a job with an office soon… and since I’m an academic, that’s where some of my books will go.
Actually, now that I think about it, its less by genre than by subject matter. And there’s one completely random shelf in my kitchen which is “fun reading.” So maybe I don’t organize by genre but by categories that I make up. I’m not sure anyone else would understand my system, so calling the categories “genre” might be a stretch.
There’s a multi-level system at work in our house, driven by my husband’s logic that says all fiction should be organized by author. I find this hard to do so I have special spots for favorite authors (at eye level and in groups) and favorite literary genres, which translates to special pockets for Jane Austen, Willa Cather, George Eliot, Marcel Proust, A. Trollope, Colette, Henry James and a couple of others, and then for Japanese literature, Russian Lit. and African lit. And…as far as “reference” works go, there are categories for Auto/bio/graphy, Literary Criticism, Art History/criticism, History in general, Dictionaries in many languages, Fairy tales/mythology, Music theory/criticism/biography, ditto Theatre, Poetry, and Philosophy. The multi-dimensional structure both annoys and amuses my husband, but the rest (and actually there’s quite a lot of “rest”) is filed alphabetically.
We purge regularly, btw, and still have thousands of volumes. But at least we’ve eliminated the duplicates and we’re getting rid of the books bought in airports just before a long flight.
Your shelves look a lot like mine. I just kind of put everything everywhere right now, but am thinking of doing some reorganizing pretty soon. I think I am going to go alphabetically.
zibilee’s latest blog post:The Weight of A Mustard Seed: An Iraqi General’s Moral Journey During the Time of Saddam by Wendell Steavenson – 288 pgs
Samuel Pepys organized his library by height too.
As for myself, I am so right brained that I just put things on shelves as I get them and I remember where they are in a “second shelf beside the window by the red candle”way. So you see the difficulties in having anyone else at all move any of my books!
Melanie’s latest blog post:Kate’s Food & Fiction Meme
I’m not OCD (obsessive-compulsive), but if you read this you might wonder…All my fiction is alphabetical order by author, my nonfiction is sorted by height. What’s OCD is the fact that all of the books on my book shelf have been entered into a Microsoft Excel database on my computer, with title, author, genre, rating, and notes. Further, every book I read is noted with title, author, date, pages, rating, and a short teaser/synopsis. It’s crazy, I know, but it’s so interesting looking back at everything I’ve read. And the DB is a great help when I’m reshelving. Speaking of which, I have three colums of recent purchases crowding my desk, I may have to reorganize soon…
Emily’s latest blog post:Hush (An Irish Princess’s Tale)
Emily, if you like keeping track of things that way, you’d probably love LibraryThing!
Combining my husband’s and my books – while continuing to receive boxes – yes boxes, plural – of (good) books from various sources, I am constantly struggling with this. You’d think being a librarian would help!
I am slowly organizing things – very slowly. I have the added issue of all the non-print media we have collected as well. Someday I might get all of it done. Maybe.
All this to admit I admire your ability to keep it all organized.
I’ve reorganized my books many times over the years. I now have them organized according to the Dewey Decimal System. This may be a bit much, I know, but it’s what has worked out the best for me. It’s solved the problem of having books all over the place, strewn about randomly.