How do you sort your books

I know it's a question that comes up occasionally on LT, but I know I am always interested, especially in how people sort fiction. Non-fiction tends to be easier because often author is less important and like goes with like, but fiction? There are so many things to think about!

For me, I cannot sort alpha by author. I would never find anything! It's as good as random to me. I mostly keep a single author together (unless the size of the book means I need to keep it on a different shelf) but which authors go next to each other, and where they are on the bookshelf (top, middle bottom, right, left, center) is all about how I feel about the book, or, if I haven't read it yet, what I associate with the book. I usually shelve by publication order within an author, which keeps series in order, unless I think it looks nicer otherwise.

I also take genre into consideration (it factors heavily into how I feel about the books anyway) and the shelves follow a gradiation of quirky expressions of genre. The tough ones are writers who write in more than one genre where I have to try to arrange the shelves to keep them together as much as possible, but still keep the overall flow.

Ok, maybe I overthink it, but it makes sense to me!

So what idiosyncratic shelving habits do you guys have?

I don't have tons of fiction, but I'm still somewhat organized and only a tad quirky. All of the sci-fi and fantasy is grouped together. I discovered John Irving, Margaret Atwood, Walker Percy, Tim O'Brien, and D.M. Thomas in conjunction with a class in college, and I've always grouped books by these authors. I have a cluster of turn-of-the-century British/Irish literature that stays together. Most of my literature in translation is grouped geographically, African literature and Eastern European (including Russia) figuring prominently. The fluffier stuff stays together as well. Philosophical fiction (e.g., Candide, Sartre, Rand) goes with philosophy and not on the fiction shelf.

Beyond those larger categories, the remainder tend to go where they'll fit in my one fiction bookcase rather than as logically as the other stuff. Books have a home shelf, but order on the shelf is random except that certain books must be vertical and some horizontal on some shelves to optimize use of space.

>1 macsbrains: I don't think I'd be able to find anything if I didn't shelve alphabetically by author!

I come from a bookselling career, so I tend to shelve my books the way a bookseller would, as opposed to a librarian.

I organize everything by author. Seeing how little space I have, and how many books I have, things are shelved a bit quirky. The only constant is how all author's books are in the same space, on the same shelf, at the very least. Mass markets are the easist to take care of, my hardcovers and trade paperbacks seem to be placed almost random, based on the space that they take up (and still organized by author).

I dream of having a room with lots of shelves and room for all my books. Right now every shelf I have is doubled up, and that makes things hard for me, as I wish to display all my books (and it would make it easier to find stuff!)

I have to admit that I don't sort on shelves at all except one bookcase that is needlework books with some of my charts and patterns and cookbooks on a counter in the kitchen or in a drawer. As I open and enter boxes of stuff into my library, I am repacking and marking the boxes which will help greatly. I also sorted and boxed patterns and charts. But the shelves or piles on the 1st floor are historical - it's where the book landed when acquired or when we moved in many, many years ago or moved when we painted. Somehow I can find books, usually by color and size. (And I won't tell how many unintentional duplicates I had.)

As a librarian, I should organize my stuff somehow and I don't. My bookshelves in my library office are the same way - when we move offices, the stuff goes on a random shelf or, if I use a lot, on my desk or within chair reach, and waits for the next move.

Fiction is arranged by author.

Non fiction is a completely different matter. Biographies/memoirs are all together, arranged alphabetically by whose biography it is. Genealogy books are all together. My scientific books are all together, as are the books that could loosely be called psychology, and those that are (again, loosely) theology. Within each "subject" they are generally sorted by author, but not always.

Children's books are all kept together and these are actually sorted by physical size, because when I'm looking for a specific one, I tend to remember how big it is. I also like the way they look on the shelf, biggest to smallest.

Bibles are all together on their own shelf.

Books that are TBR are unsorted but are in a completely different room even from the rest of the bookshelves.

Cookbooks are impossible to organize and even if I did organize them they'd never stay thay way!

It all makes sense to me and lets me find everything when I need it, but it hardly qualifies as librarian-quality!

>2 SchanleyMedia: I can see putting Rand, et. al., with the philosophy books. That makes sense to me. I don't really make too much of a distinction between fiction/non-fiction. I think of it more along the lines of instructional (educational) and, well, not.

But then, I also shelve The Hobbit with Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, and classical Greek drama. It's sort of an "iconic mythologies" or "classics that spawn their own mythos" shelf. (See my tag for that shelf: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/macsbrains&tag=%4061 )

>4 Mareofthesea: My shelves are doubled too, and sometimes when I am browsing for something to read I forget. It would be wonderful to only have to single stack!

>6 mlnelson01: That makes sense to me, too. (Except for the sorting fiction by author part :) but I realize I'm the odd one there.) I have to sort by size too because I have 3 different shelf heights, small, smaller, and why-is-this-book-so-large. Mostly it's the science books that are large, and the only author I really have multiple volumes for is Douglas R. Hofstadter and because of the varying heights they are spread over two shelves.

This spring my father, brother and I will be building new shelves. I hope to have 4 floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, crossing the entire 10 foot span of my spare room. If done right, the shelves will be enough to fit just over 1000 books, 2000 doubled up. This should give me the space I need to really sort stuff out and keep it organized. However, it should be noted that this is me, and while I may be the neatest, most organized person otherwise (almost OCD at times...) my bookshelves tend to be a bit less organized.

Mine are "arranged" much like fdholt's (#5). What matters is where they land when they arrive home; whether read or unread - books I won't read again for a long time are usually less accessible so new books can be kept close; regularly needed books are handy. I'd like to be more organized but shelf height etc has to be kept in mind. In any case, I don't have any trouble finding what I want - unless my husband has lent it to someone (or worse!) without telling me.

I do mine by author and then alphabetical unless they are in a series. I need to get some bookshelves. Right now I have most of them still in boxes and then some in the dinning room hutch. I figure since we don't have any nice dishes yet then I should put it to use some how.

I think I have fewer books than many of you. Macsbrains has thousands and Mareofthesea well over a thousand as well. I have somewhere between 400 and 700. I'm fortunate to have a room in my current home that acts as a library with five bookshelf units in it, plus two middling-size built-ins in my family room and smaller regular bookshelves in each bedroom (reserved for family member's personal collections!)

Double stacking would make me insane. I'm not the neatest person but certain things drive me bonkers and that's one of them. Obviously it works for many of you! But any shelving arrangement that requires me to move things to get to what I want (even in the kitchen, which is challenging) makes my blood pressure rise. I don't know how or why I developed this personal tic but there it is.

I'll eventually move to a smaller house and when I do many of the books will have to go - at thispoint in my life I'd rather have room for new ones than keep all the old ones that are just hanging around!

At the moment, my books are loosely organized by whether I've read them or not (TBR with my parents, already read in storage *sigh*). But when I have them on shelves, they're organized by non-fiction/fiction, and the subcategories within those groups:

Non-fiction: biographies/memoirs (alpha by subject), history (chronological), religion/philosophy, political, travel, science, and whatever other non-fiction category I can't remember at the moment.

Fiction: series (kept separate from other fiction, regardless of genre; generally in order of publication, but chronologically for Star Wars), mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, general fiction, classics, all organized by title.

This is the reason I don't use any official book organizing system (Dewey, LoC, etc): none of them organize things the right way (i.e. my way :P)!

I group by general/largish categories first (my work books (classical studies and Greek and Latin stuff - mostly at, well, work now, but soon to be coming back home), The Husband's work books (physics et al.), then other non-fiction/reference, then aaaallll the fiction, by author. We too are looking to redo completely our office/library room and build new floor-to-ceiling shelving (that is, if we don't have to move), and when/if we do, I've been toying with the idea of going LoC on the whole works. We'll see if I still have that particular wild hair up my bum when we get there.

I have the 'Main Shelves' collection arranged in a simplified Dewey order, and alphabetical by author where necessary (although alphabetical by subject in the biography section). In the rest of the house my other collections are alphabetical by author - My Girlsown (schoolstories and other children's literature) are on the landing and my Virago collection in the spare bedroom. My husband has his books in his study arranged to suit his usage. I can see some logic to it but mostly it looks random to me.

You can probably guess from my username that we live in a Vicarage. It goes with the job and is much larger than we would have if we had bought or rented independently. However when he retires we will be living in a much smaller house or flat and it's possible that some books may have to go...

Back home all used to be in boxes... ordered by size in most cases - the idea was to have a space for all those books.

Now after I moved, I have a lot less books... and I just got some bookcases - 2 of them actually. So planning to have one for fiction, one for non-fiction.

Heavy books at the bottom (obviously) but then the non-fiction will probably be based on subjects (and dates for the historical stuff)... still trying to figure out about the fiction.

Ask me again in 6 months - I suspect I will have a totally new system that has nothing to do with the plan :)

>12 Thwaite: This is the reason I don't use any official book organizing system (Dewey, LoC, etc): none of them organize things the right way (i.e. my way :P)!

I concur!

I have shelves in just about every room in the house, including the kitchen, along the entire east wall thereof, where I keep housed the hc fiction and trade fiction titles I care most about, roughly 900-1M of them. I have somewhat of an eidetic memory, so I've never needed to alphabetize or organize in order to find anything -- I just automatically seem to know where it is no matter where it is -- but I've found myself "organizing" nevertheless, along spine colors and publisher. Didn't really set out to, it just started sort of "making sense" to my idiosyncratic sensibilities. So, there's an orange shelf of hardcovers, a dark-blue shelf, white, black, and so on.

For the trades, The Dalkey Archives have their own shelf, as do Vintage, Oxford classics, Harper Perennial, etc. Every publisher has it's own distinctive "spine-look" that makes it easy for remembering.

The Penguins take up several shelves, which are then further subdivided into the Penguins w/the orange spines, the Penguin classics with the black spines, and so on. I will try and keep the same authors next to each other as much as possible, but inevitably there'll be one over in the New Directions shelf and two others in the Dover shelf. Probably makes no sense for anybody else, but it works for me.

First post here btw. I'm noticing that you all aren't being very quiet, as the name of the group would seem to imply! Very paradoxical or perhaps, more accurately, ironic of you all. I like it.

Re: arrangement by publisher/spine

There was (and maybe still is) this incredibly cool used bookstore in Durham, NC where everything was shelved by publisher. It was an absolute blast to shop there because of the breadth of the collection and the ambiance of all the matching spines. What a feeling of plenty! The place was somewhat overpriced and the location wasn't convenient for me as a non-driver, so I didn't go very much, but it was cool when I did go.

"Quieter": I'm enjoying the irony, too. I think there's the perfect amount of chatter. :)

>17 absurdeist:

I shelve my Japanese manga by publisher so the spines all look nice too.

Huh, funny. I have very little problem sorting fiction (well, OK, there is the catch-all General Fiction collection...) but non-fiction is a _pain_. Does Stephen Jay Gould go into science, or essays, or...? (science).

I have fiction separated by genre and sorted by author (or otherwise I'd never find a book!) - SF is in my bedroom, as are the romances I've decided to keep; mysteries and animal books (which are actually mixed fic and non-fic, as I couldn't possibly separate Terhune from Meek from Durrell (Gerald, not Lawrence) from ...whoever wrote the Black Stallion books) on one bookcase in my living room; another one has children's books, humor, historical fiction, the romances I haven't decided about yet, adventure and general fiction (I don't read a lot of mainstream fiction. This is where that goes, along with anything I can't figure out)).

Then the non-fiction - those I group by subject, but don't bother to sort by author...well, no, I do when I have a bunch by one author. Mostly I don't. But Stephen Jay Gould is all together, for instance. Science, crafts, arts (and that's a fun division!), computer books, history, biography...whatever else I've forgotten. Oh, music, and cookbooks. And then the fun stuff like biographical novels, children's biographies, history of science... those tend to wander around as I change my mind as to what category they belong to. And I love Dewey, it's good to have someone else say firmly that _that_ is a biography, _that_ is a children's book...of course sometimes I disagree. But it's nice to have something to disagree with rather than just floundering.

I've been using LoC classification for almost two years now. Works well for me.

>20 jjmcgaffey: I couldn't possibly separate Terhune from Meek from Durrell (Gerald, not Lawrence) from ...whoever wrote the Black Stallion books)

One of my favorite "room full of books" scenes in My Family and Other Animals is when a young Gerry is describing Theodore's library, and how he has all these lurid detective novels mixed in with the biology and folklore books.

...you gonna make me reread all my Durrells....

>21 DaynaRT: Wow - I'm seriously impressed... LOC... yikes. :)

Mine are sorted non-fiction from fiction, and then (loosely) by genre, but with precedence given - front of shelf, vs. buried in the back - to the authors that I read more frequently. How many books I have by a particular author also figures in space-wise since the shelves are only so long.

>11 mlnelson01: I'm glad I'm not alone in not liking the concept of double stacking. I have relatively few book because a) I'm picky and only buy books - literary fiction, essays, drama, etc - that I truly want to have and reread and b) I lack space.

I'll admit to being quasi obsessive about the method and order of my books, the kinds of editions I collect, and the sorting.

Saro

I wish I didn't have to double stack, but my books share space on my bookshelves with everything else I own, so until I win the lotto... :(

It also seems that I don't own anything, besides clothes, that I don't try to put on a shelf for display. (And I'm sure that if I were into fashion in any way the clothes wouldn't be excluded.) Is there a medical term for this kind of condition? 'Must-put-on-shelf-itis'? Or perhaps I just wear my heart on my shelves?

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder specific to books but I'll go with CDO because I need to alphabetize and sort.

This post isn't meant to trivialize the disorder. Sometimes I think I'm mildly OCD.

My dvd's and cd's are meticuliusly ordered. Not alphabetically or chronologically, they sit beside each other in order of how they relate to each other; Pans Labyrinth is fantastical enough to sit beside The Fall, which is a film about stoytelling so it sits beside Breakfast on Pluto etc.. Rule being that the same actor,director or band can't be beside each other. I have actually lost sleep over this. Very odd and my own.

With books I am much more care-free. I don't like being too uptight with books so they go in any random order and get pulled out in any random order. They live on two rickety shelves made out of former skirting boards and built in wardrobe that has been gutted and lined with "shelves", of a sort. The only concession being that old and collectible books are on a shelf of their own and ordered with the oddball method.

I recently reorganized my library by country of author, alphabetized within the country genre and then chronologically within the author genre. However, the whole country classification is often times problematic because there are so many authors that have immigrated or hold duel citizenship. I have to make a lot of hard calls as to where to place certain books and authors but I remind myself that it is my own personal library and thus, only needs to make sense to myself. I have grouped certain countries, like I have all my Scandinavian books together, although separated by country...alphabetically because I'm anal like that and I grouped my Russian books with books from the former Soviet republics because so many of those books were written during the Soviet era and so are part of a whole in that way but again, they are organized by individual countries.

My cd's are in alphabetical order and chronological within artists but my dvds are in no order whatsoever and that suddenly bothers me...I think I have just found my task for the day.

hello everyone! I'm new to the group, but thought I'd just jump in! I like this topic because book organizing is usually a huge problem for me, and they never stay in order!!

part of my problem is that, inexplicably, none of my shelves are the same size lol. I have one rather short shelf that only small books will fit on, so all my small books go there. Then my big books go on the top shelf because that's where they fit. The very top shelf (the one I can't reach without a chair) is mostly books I don't ever read, but dont' want to part with.

The rest of my books are roughly grouped by genre, and then in order by author. However, as much as I would love to keep them nice and neat, there always comes a time where I find a book that won't fit on any other shelf and ends up shoved in the middle of another, where it doesn't really belong, and throws everything else off.

oh, to have some shelves that make sense!! oneday I'm going to invest in a proper bookcase :)