Like many book lovers, I look forward to getting my Shelf Awareness for Readers newsletter every Tuesday and Friday. (In fact, when I’m not on maternity leave, Tuesdays are my least favorite day of the week – all that Monday motivation is spent but Friday is oh-so-far away – and my Shelf Awareness email is sometimes the only thing that gets me through those days.) I always read the introduction, sometimes read the author features, and skim the reviews for books that I think sound particularly intriguing. But my favorite thing about the Shelf Awareness newsletter is when it links to bookish articles and features elsewhere on the web. Last Tuesday’s Shelf did just that, pointing readers to a feature in which Geraldine Brooks (who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning March, which I loved) describes the whimsical way in which she organizes her bookshelves: alphabetical by author, but within that system she pays attention to how the authors would get along at a dinner party. Heh!
I am not, I’m sorry to say, quite that whimsical. In my kitchen, I have things sorted on a loose system of how-much-do-I-like-this, which drives hubby crazy and befuddles friends and family members who try to cook in my house. But on my bookshelves, I’m pretty straightforward: I organize my books by genre and within genre, roughly by size. I have a few idiosyncracies; for instance, within my classics collection I have a shelf and a half of books published by Barnes & Noble, and those are pretty much sorted geographically (English, Russian, American, and so on and so forth), but also by color (the older cream covers on the left, newer black colors on the right). It’s all about what my eye finds appealing, within a system that generally makes sense.
Here’s how I sort my shelves:
Left Shelf
Top: mystery novels (Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers) on the left, children’s and young adult on the right.
Second from top: more children’s books
Third from top: literary fiction
Third from bottom: literary fiction
Second from bottom: classics, mostly trade paperback (some small hardcovers)
Bottom: classics, mostly trade paperback (some small hardcovers)
Middle Shelf
Top: Sentimental (pic of my grandparents, unity candle from my wedding, Jane Austen book hubby gave me when we were dating)
Second from top: Complete Charles Dickens (handed down from my grandmother)
Third from top: Complete Charles Dickens (handed down from my grandmother)
Third from bottom: Other leatherbound classics and nice hardcover classics
Second from bottom: Trade collection hardbound classics
Bottom: Barnes & Noble hardbound classics
Right Shelf
Top: Biographies and more literary fiction
Second from top: More literary fiction
Third from top: Comedy (David Sedaris, P.G. Wodehouse, my beloved Jon Stewart) and my bookmark collection
Third from bottom: Travel books (Rick Steves and Rough Guides as well as travel memoirs)
Second from bottom: Cookbooks
Bottom: Knitting
When I write it all out like that, it seems kind of weird. But I swear it makes sense in my head and appeals to my eye, and since I’m generally the only one who goes looking for books on these shelves (hubby has his own shelves, in his den) I’m cool with it. What about you – how do you organize your bookshelves?
covered in flour 
Most of my traditional books with “soft pages” are still in boxes after our last move. I visit them from time to time to find something I want to re-read that I don’t have as an ebook. I do miss my big bookshelves, though. It was never organized. I like color and so I tended to put books where I thought they looked the nicest based on the color/wording on the spine. I just seemed to remember where everything was, and if it took a little time to find something, that’s not always bad when it resulted in rediscovering some other literary gem while looking.
Don’t you love those unexpected literary gems? Even with my books shelved (loosely) by genre, I still occasionally happen upon something fun while looking for my next reading adventure. I love to go in and just look over the selection and pick something on the spur of the moment!
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What fun to see a photo of those shelves, since I stayed in that room this summer!
My shelves are generally organized by genre and author, with shelves for fiction, biography/memoir, poetry and writing, spiritual books, mystery and young adult lit. I keep some favorite series in the bedroom and others, along with my cookbooks, on a shelf in the living room. And there’s one shelf that is a total hodgepodge. But I kind of like it.
Heh, that’s right, you had the chance to peruse them in person! I think that by genre is probably a popular way to shelve books in home libraries. It certainly makes a lot of sense. But there’s room for hodgepodge shelves, too!
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