EntriesSo I’m still dreaming about Helen’s bookcases. I went to her with this problem: I’m looking for [sekret projekt] and I need to read up on it. What do you suggest? And then she took me to her front room and there in all its glory was her collection of SF and F by female writers, filed alphabetically by author. And Helen was talking and telling me things and then pulling all kinds of books off her shelves and looking for things and then she’d say,” oh THIS book is the one that they had that fight about in the fanzines” and “then this was the book Russ wrote in response” etc.
Now I know Helen is an academic, I’m very envious of her enthusiasm and depth of knowledge. It’s very inspiring.
But, and here’s my real problem, my books are nowhere nearly as organised as hers. And I really admire that it was a whole wall of just books written by women. Seriously cool. As was her, “oh she was a physicist and wrote this,” and “she was really interesting … and had 10 children and was an explorer” etc. I’m so looking forward to getting into this reading. But I digress. C and I have a bit of a disagreement on how books should be shelved. I usually do it by genre (decided by ME) and then alphabetically by author (but also according to aesthetics). I think C thinks that all books should be alphabetical by author. He might be ok with by subject but all fiction together.
I haven’t yet sorted and shelved the fiction.
How do you shelve yours?
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fiction/nonfiction then genre/subject then alphabetically. Makes it so much easier to find things that way. Just alphabetically would drive me nuts. I don’t have enough space as it is. Her bkshelves sound lovely
We have one bookshelf of ‘true’ books and one of ‘not-true’ books (James’ appellation). Within the fiction, just alphabetically; within the non-fiction, somewhat whimsical categories and then alphabetical.
… I am getting close to overflowing my fiction shelves. Might be time to do another cull…
JUST alphabetical? No no no no! What an awful thought.
I have theme shelves, basically, and put likeminded books together. Authors have all their works together. But no alphabetising at all – I guess I don’t feel I have enough books to justify that?
It’s an intuitive system, anyway! I know where books are because they are with their friends & similar authors.
I just re-alphabetised my fiction on the weekend after a friend’s baby happily occupied herself by pulling out about three shelves of books onto the floor. I think I’d find it too hard to locate things if it wasn’t alphabetical – at the moment, the fiction is shelved in weird stacks in order to squeeze more into the shelves. And the one bookcase of non-fiction is in rough categories, and that’s all – there’s not really enough of them to bother with arranging them alphabetically.
My system is pretty much like Tansy’s. It works for me most of the time, though I often think about alphabetizing so I can find things easier.
I don’t have the space to theme my fiction! Non-fiction is different… plus there’s less of it.
Non fiction is usually loosely based on dewey decimal system, then alphabetical.
All fiction is just alphabetical.
Genre, then alphabetically – but – being an Australian counts as a genre in my shelving (helped by the fact 99 percent of my Australian books are also spec fic). So there’s a bookcase of aussie stuff, then non fiction, then romance, then the rest.
I try to keep mine shelved alphabetically by author. Being a man, I don’t have the genetic disposition to follow it too closely, but I try!
Ummm, I put them in the bookshelf. This weekend I realised that this way is not conducive to ever finding books again, but it is a good way to realise that I own books I’d forgotten I had.
By genre first. SF/F, crime, literary, non-fiction travel, non-fiction birds, non-fiction about writing, non-fiction plants/forest, non-fiction animals/insects.
SF/F is the only one done alphabetically by author. Bird books (of which I have several hundred) are done by region.
There’s also alot of non-fiction books separated out because they are my reference books for whatever project or fiction I am working on. They are the ones around my desk.
My system is pretty complicated. Stuff I don’t care about really goes in normal alphabetical order for fiction with non fiction by subject on the bottom shelf.
Stuff I care about… it depends on why I care about it. My Pratchett all goes together above my GNs. Books I have read are stacked normally, books I haven’t are left laying down. Collections of book series’s (like my penguins and sf masterworks) go together and then alphabetical unless they are numbered. My cheap 2nd hand books all go together, but I don’t currently have enough shelving to display them properly so those tend to just get stacked on our spare computer desk I pulled off the verge.
I have a ‘favourites’ top shelf that is arranged purely due to aesthetics. They’re only books I bought brand new though (mostly when I had no money and hadn’t discovered book dep). My gardening, craft and house stuff books that I like are sorted by subject and size…
I find it is a good system, but now I’m thinking about it, this probably explains why the Boy never looks for a book himself just asks me where I’ve put it.
I shelve by size (so all mass market paperbacks together for example) and then alphabetically by author. Just alphabetically with all different book sizes would drive me bonkers, especially because then I wouldn’t be able to stack books on top and therefore would run out of shelf space even more quickly than I do now!
At school they’re shelved in containers by genre so they’re always facing cover out (more attractive to the kids). Genres include modern contemporary, classic contemporary, action, fantasy, science fiction and time travel, animals, books for grade 7s only, and a bunch of series/author boxes, then the non fiction. (all up above 6 book shelves worth)
At home it’s usually wherever we can fit them. Our nice book case is organized roughly by types – religious books, cooking books, Matt’s non fiction, Children’s fiction, my non fiction, my fiction, Matt’s fiction, craft books, airplane books. But both of us have our own additional book shelves which we also try to organise.
I just wish Kindle for iPad had some way of organising books into shelves
Our fiction is almost all alphabetical by author, hardbacks are shelved elsewhere but also alphabetical. Non-fiction is vaguely categorised, with sections for computer books, fencing, Chinese etc.
Some stuff is piled up around the place, but I’m building more bookcases at the moment to take care of that.
Hi Alisa,
As an ex librarian I shelve all fiction alphabetically according to either author (or editor for anthologies), and then for the non fiction I have a rough memory of the dewey decimal system and shelve according to that. It means that whatever the book I can find it really quick.
Oh, there’s something so satisfying about sorting books on shelves!
I trained as a librarian so it’s non-fiction by subject and fiction alphabetically. I’m in the middle of renovations at the moment and most of my books are packed up with only a few kept out and they are randomly on the few shelves I have available. It’s driving me nuts.
I have very limited shelf space on my boat, so I have mostly reference books immediately to hand–educational (physics, biology, geology and field guides). Writing texts and books I can justify as research go in my writing locker, along with random notebooks and magazines. The deep storage is in the shipping container where we have three bookcases full of F/NF, sorted according to topic. I try to have duplicate electronic copies of the novels I read repeatedly, and conversely, if I read an awesome eBook, I’ll try to get a (hard cover) copy of it. Any book that goes on the boat is likely to get damaged, so my decisions can be heartless- I have an illustrated Bryson’s ‘History of Nearly Everything’ that was flung across the cabin in the Tasman Passage.
Currently it’s a bit of a mish mash:-( Typically, I’ve had non-fiction/fiction, with fiction divided into very broad genres, and the alphabetical by author within that.
However, now that we have kids books/’school’ books (and Puggle starting to raid our shelves as well), we really need to re-organise. I can see we’re going to end up with a _lot_ more non-fiction, and it will need to be ordered sensibly (I’m thinking broadly along dewey lines mostly). Also our fiction needs to be separated by age-appropriateness (Puggle picks what looks interesting… he’s 7… there’s things I’d rather he started with!), but also somewhat by topic (myths together, historical together… not sure quite what else).
Really, I need to finish putting them all in the database, and play with shelving there…. because committing to changing all the physical books around is a _big task_!
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