I just recently bought a house, and it’s big enough that there’s room for a dedicated personal library. I’m very excited! It presents a really fun challenge: how do I organize my books now that I have enough space to display all of them? (Previously, I had been just shoving a bookcase wherever it would fit and stacking books on tables. I expect I’ll probably continue to do that, but the majority of my books will now fit in a single room.)
I was in library school when I first learned that some people organize their books by color. The effect is really cool, and I don’t think it would be that difficult to find a particular book since I tend to remember what color my own books are. I actually have this IKEA bookshelf where I’ve organized a few of my books in roy g biv on their sides from top to bottom. It looks pretty neat. When I was first dating my boyfriend, he moved into a new apartment and I convinced him to let me organize his books by color because I really wanted to see what it would look like. I found out later that he hated the idea, but he let me do it anyway. (Aww.) I can definitely see the drawbacks. For example, a lot of series books wouldn’t be shelved together since they each have a different cover color, like the Harry Potter books.
Aside from the IKEA shelf, my books right now (prior to moving into the new house) are organized in the standard alphabetical order by author’s last name. Most of what I own is fiction, and the few nonfiction titles I have occupy a single shelf and they’re not really in any particular order.
I say that my fiction is organized in alpha order, but that’s true only to a certain extent. Because we have limited space in our rental, I’ve divided them into hardbacks and paperbacks. The hardbacks go against the back of the shelf and the paperbacks go in front of the hardbacks. Most of my shelves are deep enough that this works without any of the books hanging over the edge. In theory, this allows me to see all of my books at once. In practice, I still have to lean the paperbacks forward to see the title of the hardbacks. I hope that this won’t be necessary in the new place. My graphic novels I also keep separate, and they occupy just a couple of shelves next to my cookbooks in the kitchen. (You see what I mean about putting books wherever there’s space?)
When I was a kid/teen and living with my parents, I’d frequently take a couple of hours and reorganize my bookshelf in my bedroom for fun. I loved looking at all of my books and remembering a title I had forgotten I had. At the time, I had a single bookcase and it seemed like I had quite a lot of books. Teenage Kimberly would look at my current collection and feel awed. I know the trend nowadays is often to downsize material possessions, including book collections, but acquiring books has always made me feel good and I’ve come to like that aspect of my personality. I do have a lot of books that I haven’t yet read, but the fact that they’re there comforts me. I always have a book at hand, on almost any topic, whenever the itch hits me – sci fi, contemporary, romance, high fantasy, classic, middle grade, YA, adult. I strongly associate books with memories, so almost each title I pick up reminds me of something good, like the first time I attended a library conference or a particularly engaging undergrad literature class.
In my new house, I’ve been toying with the idea of organizing my books more like they’re organized in a library. I think I want to separate my adult books from my children’s and teen books, and I may even decide to separate them by genre as well. I doubt I’ll go the color route, since I’ll be sharing the space with my boyfriend’s books (we don’t interfile!) and it would look a little odd to have some shelves in the room color-coded and others not.
I thought it might be fun to take a little informal poll to see how our readers organize their personal book collections. Feel free to elaborate on your system in the comments!
I JUST organized a full shelf of mostly YA by color, and it's very pretty, but things like series being split up and occasionally forgetting what color a TBR is are already getting to me. I've traditionally always been an author's-last-name purist, and it's probably only a matter of time before I go back to that :-p Part of the issue is having never lived anywhere that would really fit more than one big bookshelf; I envy your awesome library room!
I love this post! It's gotten me thinking quite a bit since we're now in the midst of talking about a not-too-far-in-the-future move, too. I did the books by color organization for a while, but then I realized that was an overwhelming task because whenever new books came in, I'd have to spend hours rearranging things to make the new titles fit.
My books are spread throughout the house, in various piles and stacks and on shelves. My organization, at least the part that IS organized, is done by age divisions — I have a big shelf that's just adult books, fiction and non, organized by author (only in the sense that all of my books by Bill Bryson are together, all of my books by Murakami are together, etc.). I did the same with YA and middle grade titles, and I have a smaller shelf between the two bigger ones that has my mass market titles, my signed books, and all of my graphic novels and comics.
But also there's a stack of books in my living room as tall as me . . .
This is always something that's fascinating to me! I got to do a guest post for Mackenzi Lee's Project: Bookshelf (https://mackenzilee.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/project-bookshelf-with-kazia-berkley-cramer/) and it was a really interesting experience to take the time to break down my organization process for my prized possessions. Now, my only difference is I have a huge stack of ARCs that I separate out in the hopes I will pressure myself to read more of them sooner!
Short answer for me is by genre and then author's last name, but I do have a separate bookshelf for my favorite books by my favorite authors. (Also by author's last name.)
I actually organize by size and then by genre. For some reason having tall and short books mixed up drives me crazy. It also helps with space issues, since I can arrange shelves to waste as little space between shelves as possible.
I JUST redid my two bookcases. One shelf for non-fiction, one for cookbooks (it's really half), and another for adult books. Then I have my YA on it's own bookcase, and it's separated by genre, and even the genres are in alphabetical order. Apocalypse, contemporary, contemporary realistic, etc. Then by author last name and finally by publication date if there's more than one by an author–like 11 of Sarah Dessen's. 😉
I'm finding this to be extremely pleasing to my organizational side. So pretty.
I love colored bookcases, but I also need my authors and series together!!! I sort by genre. For example, all the Jodi Picoult, followed by similar-genre authros like Jacquelyn Mitchard, Diane Chamberlain, Heather Gudenkauf, etc, followed by a shelf of adult contemporary, followed by a shelf of teen contemporary. A shelf for mythology, a shelf for fairy tales, a shelf for high fantasy, a shelf for dystopian, a shelf for chick-lit books like Meg Cabot's stuff or Bridget Jones. Etc, etc. That's how I do it!
I do try to keep my books within an author's grouping together by release year. This is sometimes out of order if it's a series and the sequel comes out years later, because series go together. This also changes if an author such as Diane Chamberlain stops coming out in hardcover, because if I had her earlier titles in a mix of formats, I always have hardcovers followed by paperbacks (trade) followed by paperbacks (mass). I also reverse it. So for example, I have a hardcover of one of Juliet Marillier's books, then her trades, then her mass, followed by mass of Jane Yolan that move up to trade and then trade of Gail Carson Levine followed by hardcover, then hardcover of Shannon Hale…
I really like my book heights to be as similar as possible, so I'll group my shelves like this and put authors together by height! LOL! Is that too weird?
I just checked the alphabetical box, but there are a few separations — I put very young kids' books, like Dr. Seuss and Richard Scarry, at the end. Reference like Bibles and dictionaries (mostly foreign language) at the end. Middle grade and such is just mixed in with all the rest. Fiction, nonfiction, everything. Biographies are put with the person they're about, like Tolkien books and biographies all together.
I… think that's it. Only I should be using past tense, because since we moved from CA to OR we haven't had room or arranged room for all our bookcases, and most of my books are in boxes. Cataloged in boxes — I have a list, and as I packed each book I wrote down which number box it was going in; yes, it took a long time — but in boxes. In no real order.
I have played with organizing more like a library or like one particular bookstore I worked in, but we'll see. At the moment the dream is just to get them all out of boxes! Like your new house, YAY!
“I'd frequently take a couple of hours and reorganize my bookshelf in my bedroom for fun.” You’ve clearly struck a chord with some like-minded nerds
One of my best organization schemes happened when I (bravely) let a friend who was helping me move unpack my books. She did an excellent job and it was good for variety, books I had forgotten moved to the forefront and titles looked different next to titles I would not have conceptually grouped.
I’ve recently found myself in a place where my husbands and my books can’t really be kept separate. We also just moved and have more space for books (including a built in roomier than any of the bookcases we own!). Part of the current organization was “how fast can we get these out of boxes so we can move in this room” but I have always liked grouping by idea rather than some rigid classification system. Fiction and nonfiction are mixed, sometimes loosely grouped by the geography of the subject/setting, together with titles I read during a particular phase or on a trip, and ALWAYS writings and rewritings together (The Odyssey and Cold Mountain, for example).
As a librarian by trade, I hate to admit that I have no system of organization for my books at home. They are all over the place, in piles, in bookcases, double stacked, mixed in with my husband's and kids' books, etc. Shameful!