Did you know that there are people in the world so very different from me, that there’s the chance we aren’t the same species?
I’m not talking about religious beliefs or political leanings or whether they like vanilla ice cream instead of chocolate (which is insane).
I’m talking about the fact that they organize their bookshelves by color.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This is beautiful. I even like the teapots. And she has excellent taste in books.
But…BUT…the Harry Potter books aren’t next to each other!
Most of them aren’t even on the same shelf. Oh, the humanity!
Pretty or not, I would never be able to find anything. I have no idea what color my book are. And series wouldn’t be together. How could the Narnia books survive if they weren’t smushed together? I’m not sure they could.
I will say, though, that the Organize by Color trend is not the worst.
Do you want to see the worst?
Really? It may scar you.
Alright, you’ve been warned.
No, your eyes are not deceiving you. These people have all their books turned backwards.
It’s just evil.
Although, the hilarious Joey Harpel did come up with one genius reason for turning books around.
She used it as a way to curb her book buying addiction. You can read here how she turns book backwards she hasn’t read yet – with the reward of turning them the right way when she has.
So…
How do you organize your bookshelves?
(Mine is loosely by topic/genre, then by author, for anyone who’s curious.)
Do you alphabetize?
Sort by topic?
Do you sort by color? (And if so, how do you find the book you want?)
Do you channel your inner librarian and use the Dewey Decimal System?
And if you have all your books turned so the spines are hidden, please leave some compelling reason why we should still speak to one another. Because that might be a deal breaker.
I organize my books by size. Therefore, books in a serious stay together. I don’t think I could do it by color, that is just chaos! Lol
I can see the size thing. I really don’t like tiny books squished in between big books. My only fear would be that book 7 of Harry Potter is hardback, but the other 6 are paperback. The size rule would just have to be broken, there!
I have a pile of books that I want to read. Then I make another pile after I’ve read them and donate them to friends. However, I also have a kindle and have over 4000 books in it! I do believe there should be a way of giving the books I’ve read on the kindle to someone who wants to read them too! My books are not organized really, except for the series like Harry Potter. I agree, they must be together.
ooh! there should definitely be ways to donate ebooks! That’s a great idea!
I arrange my books Alphabetically by Author’ last name, then their first name, so I can find what I want in a snap IF I know who the author is. If I don’t, then I have fun reading through titles or trying to remember what the spine looks like. 🙂
Lol! That’s a problem for me sometimes too! or I confuse which author wrote something, and I’m staring at the shelf wondering where the book I’m looking for is! It’s worse on my Kindle, because none of my searches show up the right book. 🙂
Currently my books are all higgledy piggledy. There are books all over my apartment spread between me and my sister’s room, our Dad’s room, and the living/dining area, and around the bathroom. One of these days I may try to intruduce some organization to our library.
I’m not sure you should. You’d lose the opportunity to say “higgledy piggledy.” And that’s worth a lot.
There is absolutely no organization to my bookshelf. The best way I can describe it is… oh that doesn’t fit there so lets try here, nope still not fitting…. maybe if I lay it down, it’s part a series oh well then I need to rearrange the whole thing. I have books all over the house from the bedroom to the living room and kitchen. And don’t even get me started on my kid’s books, all those different weird shapes and sizes!
Oh, the kids’ books are the WORST. Why are some of them shaped like a tall, skinny castle or a wrench? Who can fit that on a shelf? Or they have weird, lumpy covers that don’t slide in well. I feel your pain.
The worst one I have is a pop-up book, it is a wedge!! OMG why do you they do this!
I think I had a mild heart attack seeing these pictures. No way could I do either of these, I’d go nuts. I have mostly ebooks now but when I did have paperbacks, they were organized by author/series. All my art books are organized by genre/author/series. And my ebooks are all categorized in calibre.
I really need to organize my ebooks. They’re an electronic mess. If they were paperbacks, they’d give me a heart attack. 🙂
I organize my home library by author, if this author has a series it would be grouped together. I have had to reorganize my books because the books are different sizes! I can walk into my library and within a few minutes find any book I want. I have a system for lending books to friends and family this system is one of my grandson’s ideas!! Smart kid! He put a box with recipe cards in for everyone to fill out and it worked like a charm.
I don’t like either one of the ideas but each to their own!
ooh! you’re like a library! I like it!
That last chick is super crazy. 😉 Organizing by color is pretty and I do love the picture with the teapots, but it’s just insane. At least when you turn the spines around, everything is still where it should be. One day when I’m really bored and need to dust my shelves, I’ll alphabetize just to see what it looks like.
Great post!
LOL! I totally didn’t see it was you. I was like, “What? How’d you think Joey was crazy after the one with ALL THE SPINES BACKWARDS??? Because I’m a good reader…
I think it’d be such a good reward to see the spines, I’d be reading books fast!
That would drive me crazy also. Especially not seeing the spine of the books.
I prefer to alphabetize by author, then series, and if more than one series then the oldest series goes first which is determined by publication date of the first book in the series.
My books are organised by size, and alphabetically by author within the size 🙂
I also organize by size. I usually don’t have enough room for all of them so I make a second row (bad because you can’t see the ones in the back) then start piling the rest by size on top of the standing ones. The grandkids sometimes have piles in the living room and I leave them. By color is pretty but not practical to me. No way could I have the spine reversed; it looks weird and would drive me crazy.
Like Jennifer said, kid’s books are a whole ‘nother story!
I was very particular on what authors I read years ago..so I was very limited…Stephen King, John Saul, James Patterson, V.C. Andrews, Dean Koontz…I had all my books on shelves..stacked by authors. I had a mini library. Once I got my tablet, and found out about Kindle…it was a wrap. I signed up with a bunch of different sites to get free and discounted Kindle books, and now am the owner of over 5,000 Kindle books. Can you imagine that in Hardback? I can’t. I’ve come across a lot of great new authors and love my new collection. I still have some of my hardbacks, but prefer going digital, as it takes up no space at all 🙂
I have different book shelf for each genre. Mercedes Lackey has her own book case! They are basically collected by author. Sadly, there is no way to organize them on the kindle and that is where my TBR pile is! I would never separate a collection! The blasphemy!
It took me a while to figure out how to get one authors books all in one place, so i went to amazon, scrolled all the way down to manage your content and devices, where it says “show”, go to collections, click create new collection, type authors name…and there you have it. Much better than searching to me.
OMG Spines turned around. I would be so frustrated. On the other hand I would end up reading a whole bunch of books other then the one I wanted because oh that is where that one went.
As to my organization scheme. It is loosely based on genre, but due to the fact that I have 2 rolls of books per shelf, I mainly stick to grouping Authors. On one set of shelves I have my light reads, quick in and out books Robert Aspirin RA Salvatore(only because I have read them 4 or 5 times),Louis Lamour, Dick Francis and Robert Parker to name a few. Serious Reads Wheel of Time CS Freidman sp?? David Eddings Wilbur Smith and others on another book shelf. Of course once every year, I have to reorganize and resort my books. I both dread and love that day, don’t bother trying to talk to me on book organization day.
Mine are done by pile in order of receipt from Amazon or trips to a local B&N. I have stacks falling over and over a thousand books in my TBRl list on my iPad.
It’s absolutely chaotic but fun!
And yes, I have a Masters in Library Science. Sigh.
All my books used to be in around 16 boxes (averaging a cubic yard each). Unfortunately, they’re all gone now. (I’m still bitter.) Now what few paper ones I have end up wherever they end up. (But I do have around 2,000 on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, FBReader, and several others.)
Most of my books are digital so I don’t have to worry about how to organize the physical books (or how much space they take up). My digital books are organized by genre so I can find them more easily. I thoroughly enjoyed reading JA Andrews and could never imagine organizing by color (although it is indeed pretty LOL!)
I organize my books by favourite books. then subject.If I am feeling really anal and channeling my inner librarian(I did actually study library science) I will alphabetize.
Mine are generally organized by genres and then authors (not necessarily alphabetically) and the series by these authors, with my favourites at eye level and the ones I like less on the lower shelves… Unfortunately, I have so many paperbacks that they are everywhere in two rows (so you can’t see the back row) and in piles on almost every flat surface in the house:) – but I can’t imagine organizing them by size or colour, or with the spine reversed… I love the colourful spines of over 4,000 books all around the house “smiling” at me:)
And because I lack space for the paperbacks, I buy mostly ebooks now, which means over 2,000 books on my kindle right now and those I put into collections by genres:)
I don’t think a library has a patch on my book organizing levels lol: I have to have them arranged by genre, then alphabetized by author, and then each author is arranged chronologically . . . I could point you to any genre/author mostly on my shelves hehe, and I have just over 500 books so far 😀
Well I like to call my system the Do He Dismal system. Meaning anyone but me will have a dismal time finding anything, except cook books which I do keep together as much as possible as there is no flat surface that doesn’t have at least one or two book on it. My book shelves are a world unto themselves being so overloaded, two deep in most places, you’d think they would collapse. But I never seem to have a problem finding what I’m looking for. I go online and find out which library has it. ;>) he he. I likely have 2 or 3 hundred printed books and thousands of eBooks mostly from Project Gutenberg, most of them I won’t live long enough to read. I’m 65 you see. That’s the reason I don’t sing up to preview advance copies as I don’t know how soon or how long it will be before I actually read one. I can only manage one a day or so.
My book shelves must be boring. I put all the books by the san=me Author together, even if different size books.
I have seen an even worse crime by designers. They THROW AWAY the book covers, those beautiful covers that the author agonized over the design of, that look so colorful and informative. They just throw them in the trash because they are too colorful or don’t go with their color scheme.
When it comes to the color coded version, maybe those books are all the books the person has? With that few books, finding one is not a problem.
Mine are scattered all over. When in shelves I try to keep the fiction and non-fiction separately. The non-fiction is by type/genre all cook books in one place, gardening in another etc. Fiction alphabetically. But I still have a hard time of finding anything 🙁