Anyone catch the Guardian Poll on Monday? Apparently there was a (very unscientific) survey in the UK that revealed 39% of British readers don’t have any sort of organization scheme for their bookshelves. Horrors! An almost as large number of readers, 35%, organize their shelves alphabetically by author. Then the Guardian presents a poll, click on how you organize your home library. Except you can only select one thing from the list:
- Alpha by author
- Alpha by title
- by genre
- by size
- by colour
- randomly
- other
So far by genre is ahead with 37%. I had to choose “other” because well, Bookman and I have our own organizational system.
Our basement library is separated into fiction, nonfiction and anthologies and within each it is then organized by author. Mostly. There are some authors who write both fiction and nonfiction and we keep their books together according to what they write most, i.e. Stephen King: fiction. Then there are authors who have books about them like Virginia Woolf. All books Woolfian are kept together. Actually Woolf has two shelves all to herself and she is kept in the living room, not the basement. We also often have more than one book by an author and those are then shelved in alpha order according to title except if there is a series, then the books are in series order.
On the shelves in the living room are kept all the poetry books and books about specific poets including any criticism. We also tend to keep books we consider classics on the living room shelves, Bookman’s six different editions of Dracula and all of my Jane Austens for instance.
There are book piles which are not organized. I have a study/book room too where lives my desk, computer, sewing machine and a couple bookcases. There are several TBR shelves in there, unorganized. There is a shelf where lives Emerson and all related Emsersonia. A shelf of reference books. And a whole bunch of books about books. Also gardening.
See why I had to choose “other” for the poll? Most of the time I have no problem finding what I want. Sometimes something will go missing but is generally found eventually, usually when looking for something else. Everything, more or less, is cataloged in my LibraryThing account so I can technically keep track of what I do and don’t own. Nonetheless, there are a lot of books I don’t even remember owning and looking at the shelves is as delightful as browsing a bookstore or library.
Talking about how we organize our books never really gets old, does it? I wonder if how we organize our books says anything about us? And if so what, exactly? And do we want to know?
We have a basic organization by genres, and within that, alphabetically by author. I still haven’t alphabetized the fiction after our basement flood, though. I tend to put authors together and know where they are, and I’m not very organized when it comes to books (instead of alphabetizing, you know, I sit down and start reading them again).
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Jeanne, do you ever have trouble deciding what genre a book falls into? And what if an author writes in more than one genre? Heh, one of the dangers of organizing your books is getting distracted from the task and find yourself reading them 🙂
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Definitely we have genre-deciding troubles. That’s why there’s such a big “general fiction” section. Just last night we were putting some books away that I had cleaned out of Walker’s room in preparation for him coming home from college with more books (trying to make room on his shelves) and Ron said “I’m not going to put The Gone-Away World with the SF.” I said okay, noted.
If an author writes in more than one genre, we tend to put his/her books in the genre we like most, or that he/she is most prolific in.
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Ah, a general fiction section helps. It must be fun though trying to figure out a book or authors belongs.
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Strangely–it really never does get old. I am always interested in how other readers organize their bookshelves! If I had enough shelf space for all my books I could actually have an organizational scheme, but since I don’t it’s loosely by subject with books by the same authors kept together (if possible). All my Viragos are together as are my Persephones….. I have been contemplating buying a few more bookcases, but I don’t know exactly where I would squeeze them in! 🙂
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Danielle, weird that it is always an interesting topic, as if there are so many ways to organize books and someone might have discovered a new and more efficient method, a magic way to make room for everything. As for fitting in another bookcase or two, you could always get rid of the sofa 😉
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I have a library, although much smaller than the one in our last house. I left at least a hundred books at the local library when we moved. The fiction is arranged alphabetically by author and the nonfiction by category, history by era. A bookcase in the bedroom holds my collection of A & C Black illustrated travel books and other old travel narratives. Two bookcases in the study have collectable mysteries and nature / gardening books. There’s a table in the living room with TBR’s. Sometimes you can see the lamp on the table, sometimes you can’t. No more stacks on the floor, though!
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Joan, you sound so very organized! I know what you mean about floor piles. I used to have a lot but we have managed to get rid of them though sometimes Bookman has a small pile develop next to his side of the bed 🙂
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Genre and haphazard after that. That is when they get to the bookshelves–there are also stacks of books on tables and floors. I just counted surfaces with unshelved books: 4 in the living room and 5 in the bedroom. Some are unshelved because I haven’t read them, some that I’m reading, some that I re-read or refer to frequently, some that I won’t re-read and are scheduled to be given away. That is one nice thing about an e-reader–less clutter.
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Jenclair, I had to laugh about the ” That is when they get to the bookshelves.” Flat surfaces beg to piled up with books, don’t they?
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Was “by chaos” one of the choices? ‘Cause if so, that’s me. I did something painful this weekend, I actually parted with 4 books by giving them to a friend. It hurt, but I have absolutely no room left and – until I get some additional bookshelves built – if something comes in, something must go out. The only books sorted out are my cookbooks – by author.
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Grad, heh, I think chaos might fall under the random category 🙂 Does having to give away those four books provide you with incentive to get additional bookshelves? How do you keep your cookbooks so tidy? We have a small shelf in the kitchen where the cookbooks live and they just get shoved on there. It’s Bookman’s doing and it’s his kitchen so I just leave it to him!
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I can’t, in all consciousness, pick “randomly”, ’cause I do have a system, but it’s… inconsistent, at best. I usually divide books by language first and then into read and to-be-read stacks, and then organize them by author or genre or how much I want to read them/how likely I am to reread them… It’s a terrible system, but I usually find everything, and it gives me an excuse to reorganize and play with the shelves when I’m feeling sad.
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Natalia, an organizational system that gives you an excuse to play with your books seems like a good system to me! And since you can usually find everything, if it works, there is nothing that needs to be fixed 🙂
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O my… I’m definitely in the ‘other’ category, meaning: I don’t organize at all. Except maybe, those books I love are kept closer to me, like, right in my bedroom, and others more distant, like, in the family room. And those I got from annual book sales are in the boxes. LOL! But this sure is an inspiring post. Only if I have the time…
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Arti, sounds like you do have a bit of organization. I know what you mean about having the time. It can be very time consuming especially when you start looking at the books you are organizing and then find yourself reading one of them!
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I would definitely have to opt for ‘other’. Mine are alphabetical but by gender.
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Alex, well now that is one I would not have considered. What do you do if there are multiple authors with some men and some women?
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I’ve enjoyed reading how you all put your books in order. I’d have to answer the survey with the “randomly” option. We used to have a system that worked for us but that darling husband of mine bungled it up. I demanded he stop buying used books and thought he complied; however, when he changed desks at work last week he brought four tote bags of books home that he’d been hoarding at his office!
“We can incorporate them into our current shelves,” he says to me with an impish grin.
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Vanessa, it’s fun, I agree. There seems to be as many ways to order books as there are readers. Your husband is hilarious!
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I swore when we moved recently that I would have a good system for my books as I have spent a lot of time in the past searching for particular volumes, but I haven’t got around to organizing them all. Some old bookcases have various heights of shelves and that means that books have to be fitted in by size rather than author. I’m envious of your basement.
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Pining, sounds like a good excuse for some new bookcases 🙂 Plus, you are still getting settled into your new house so it will take awhile to figure out where everything, not just books, go. Basements are wonderful things, let me tell you!
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I used to alphabetize my whole fiction section (horror, classics, mystery etc) all together. Last winter I decided to categorize them, by genre, and then by author in each section. This was a fabulous way to see how I much I own in each genre. The idea was that each section could then be easily seen so I could stop hunting for books behind one another. It worked – sort of. Classics are together, fantasy is together. Mystery is together. SF is now on the floor in a big pile, as is general fiction. Not enough book shelves! LOL Now it’s trying to figure out what kind of shelves to get and where – which I will admit we are running out of space in the living room. This isn’t counting all the non-fiction that is organized by topic, every where else! So I’d have to say other, too, since the non-fiction isn’t alphabetical at all.
Yes, it’s great fun to talk about how we shelf and find our books, and enjoy looking at them, and what we have to hand…..oh yes, my poetry is alphabetical, currently on a non-fiction shelf because it was so small a few years ago, and has been growing by leaps and bounds (in part thanks to some of your posts!). I love reading about how your favourite authors and assorted books about them are grouped together in their own special places in your house. I’ve just begun to do that with Jane Austen.
Love this post!
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Susan, LOL, that’s the trouble with organizing sometimes, you are faced with more books than shelf space. But it is fun to puzzle out how to get more shelving in and where. Who needs crossword puzzles when you have to manage geometry and physics and all sorts of other things to get your books to fit. I’ve thought about organizing nonfiction by topic but we have so many different topics to keep track of I wouldn’t know where to start. So glad you poetry selection is growing! You’ll have to be sure and write about your Jane Austen shelf when you get that all organized!
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I would have to answer in the “Randomly” category because I actually arrange my books as to how they will look on my shelves. Although I do tend to segregate them according to genre, too — like, poetry over here, history over there — but fiction is kind of just all over the place. And I really like placing books horizontally on top of the vertical books. It’s quite a hodgepodge!
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Cipriano, you aren’t so very random, loosely organized is more like. I like putting books horizontally on top of the vertical too but Bookman scolds me sometimes and tells me it isn’t good for the books. He also gets grumpy if the shelves are packed too tight. Residue from his decade of working at Barnes and Noble. I just smile and ignore him 🙂
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I love reading all this. My books are split into hardback and paperback, so that the books are approximately the same size on the shelves. Then I have reference, non-fiction, and fiction, and after that, it’s alphabetized. My big problem is that I have both English and German books, and the spines don’t match up. You look at an English book one way and a German book the other way to read the title. So for about three years now, I’ve been contemplating whether I should split them according to language. But that would mean splitting apart authors whose books I have in both languages, and I know it would bug me. Such problems! 🙂
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My Book Strings, what happens if you have books by the same author and some are in hardcover and some in paperback? I would be inclined to split languages but would be bugged too by breaking apart books by the same author in both languages. The dilemmas organizing our books creates!
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So I organise my books by genre , you know non fiction, histor, classics, young adult, personal comfort books so on and so forth, until I start running out of space…then its back to the jungle and fit them all in no matter how….and even then I run short of space…it would be good idea to stop buying books for a while, but then who does that??????????!!!!!!!!!!
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cirtnecce, heh, that’s always the problem in the end isn’t it? No matter how we organized out books we never have enough space!
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Another “other” here! I have various categories (women novelists, male novelists, bios and memoirs, history, poetry, lit crit, plays, gardening, etc) and most are alphabetical by author within that. The only author I keep everything together ie works by and about though is Jane Austen. She has her own little bookcase and it includes my DVDs.
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whisperinggums, oh would I ever love to peruse your Austen bookcase! It’s fun hearing about all the different systems people have.
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