If you’re an avid reader, then I’m sure you have too many books to fill your shelves. I’m also pretty sure you love to organize the books in your free time because… why not?
1. Chronologically
You can organize your shelves this way in a number of different ways. This can be in the order you bought the books, the order the books were published, or by the author’s age… I’ve never seen anyone do that, but I’m sure it’d be interesting and probably very tedious.
2. Color
Who doesn’t want a rainbow bookshelf? Put your books in rainbow order by their spines. It would most likely split up books by the same author and series but it’d be really pretty to look at.
3. Alphabetically
Alphabetize your books. They’ll be easier to find if you’re looking for something in particular. You can order them by the title or the author’s first or last name.
4. Genre
This one speaks for itself. Clump mystery books together, romance books together, and so on. Alphabetize the genres while you’re at it.
5. Geographically
Based on where the book is set, you can put all those books together as well. You can order them based on various parts of the world, alphabetize those places, or you can put places you’ve been to in real life first. It’ll be like a map of where you’ve been as well.
6. Size and Shape
If you really want to please your eyes, put your books in order by size. It’ll look like a staircase and the books will look organized from the get-go. You can also do it by shape as well – put all the hardcover books together and then all the paperbacks together.
How do you organize your bookshelves? Let me know in the comments below. If you liked this post, please share it around.
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I don’t organize my bookshelves because I hardly have any bookshelves. Nearly all of my books are ebooks stored on my Kindle or my iPhone. I gave up physical books in favor of electronic editions quite a while ago.
I think you’re the first person to ever tell me that you prefer ebook over physical books, lol.
Mine are shelved pretty much by subject: Civil War; Antiques and Collectibles; Bible topics: Salem books (research for my mystery series):Books on writing; General research, (dictionary, Bartlet’s Quotations, Thesaurus, etc.)Books To-be-read; Special authors, (Sue Grafton, Lillian Jackson Braun, Sofie Kelly/Sophie Ryan) Then there a lot of unsorted ones. Somebody told me once that those shelves look like “editorial indigestion.”
That’s a good idea. I’ll have to try to do that with mine sometime and see how it looks.
My Kindle books aren’t organized. I keep thinking about doing it, and then I remember how many books are on my Kindle, think about how fiddly it would be, and change my mind. Haha!
My physical books are organized though. So, since you asked… When organizing my braille books and audio CDs, I arrange them alphabetically by author and then by series/title. In other words, I consider the following, in the order below:
1. Author first name or initial (the latter being for if the initial is all that’s used).
2. Author last name (for authors with the same first name or initial).
3. Series name (if applicable).
4. Number in series (again, if applicable).
5. Book title (if #3 and #4 don’t apply).
Using those, I then arrange my books alphabetically, with the only other thing being that braille books and audio CDs don’t get mixed in together… They belong on different shelves.
Oh, and series names or book titles that start with “a” or “the” – like “A Christmas Carol” or “The Worst Witch” for example (just to name the first two to spring to mind) – do not get the “a” and “the” ignored. If the book starts with “the” something, it’s listed under “t” for that author’s section of my shelves.
I wouldn’t even know how to organize my Kindle books… the order changes whenever I download a new one or I open a new one to read. It’d be hard to keep up with.
I like that you keep “The” and “A” and such in the titles. I always do that too and it’s always confusing to me when people take that out. Because if I was looking for a title that began with “The” I’d look under “T” and usually can’t find it because it’s listed as “Worst Witch, The” or something which is just silly to me.
I feel the same way about books with “the” in the title. Putting it afterwards and listing the title under anything but “t” is silly. I use the same rule when organizing movies.
Our books are done alphabetically be author, but I long to do them by colour! Thing is, though, I like having them grouped by author…
On my kindle, it’s pretty random – some author, some genre, some style, and some what they’re for (like work). Might need to rework that at some point… 😀
I would love to do mine by color just to see how it turns out. But I don’t want to split up any series or authors, so I know what you mean, lol.
My Kindle is a mess too. It reorders itself when I add or open a new book so I think it’d be pretty hard to keep it organized.
Reblogged this on Author Don Massenzio and commented:
Check out this post from Rachel Poli’s blog with 6 ways to organize your bookshelves
Thanks for the reblog.
Time to organize mine. 😛
Me too, actually.
I need more space.
So do I. I need a house dedicated to my books.
Same here. One bookshelf isn’t enough.
I organised mine by genre.I could never organise by colour as I like to keep my series’s together 🙂
I agree with that. I need to keep my series together too. Though someday I want to do it just to see what it’ll look like, lol.
Ten books in and I arrange them by which one is closest to my hand. Random = chaotic order… right?
That works too. Books on a shelf look pretty no matter how they’re set up, lol.