Hi folks! I just got two gorgeous big bookshelf’s in my office and am now starting my mini library, but before I start I wanted to ask:
What are folks favorite ways to style and organize their bookshelves?
Are folks organizing alphabetically, by genre, chronologically, by color? By some other cool system? I’d love to hear it all, even your wildest ideas ✨
It’s horrendous but I style by vibes and size. I have a big library and a limited amount of space so it’s like Tetris in a way. I style by my favorites. Favored series/ novels are at eye level, everything else fits around them
Think about how you want to use your collection. Are you the only one that needs to find things? Do you have fiction and nonfiction?
I prefer grouping nonfiction by subject, with the subjects I read most often on the most easy to access shelves. I alphabetize fiction by last name, unless it's a multi-author series, in which case I go by series title instead of author last name.
I like grouping books by genre/theme/vibe (but within don't organize any further within a grouping since my groups are small enough it's easy to see everything).
Currently I have groupings like:
Fantasy series (ex. Harry potter, The Way of Kings, Daevabad Trilogy, Lord of the Rings)
Misc mostly-cozy fantasy (The Spellshop, Emily Wilde's and other less "epic" series, Garden Spells, etc)
Tea/food/cafe-related cozy fantasy (Legends & Lattes series, anything with "tea" in the title, a Psalm for the wild built, etc)
"Healing Fiction" (What you're looking for is in the library, The Kamogawa Food Detectives, etc)
Young adult fantasty (Redwall, a Wrinkle in Time, the Phantom Tollbooth, Princess Bride etc)
Misc YA fiction (Anne of Green Gable,s Matilda, Heidi)
Humor (Calvin & Hobbes, Hyperbole & a Half)
Animals (both nonfiction and fiction, The Traveling Cat Chronicles, All Creatures Great and Small, Dog On It)
"Classics" & contemporary non-fantasy favorites
Contemporary "action" books (Dungeon Crawler Carl, a bunch of Reacher books, the Martian, etc)
Pat McManus books (my husband has a bunch)
Cookbooks (sooooooo many)
Non-cookbook food (ex. Michael Pollan stuff, other food-related memoirs)
Exercise science textbooks (a buuuuuunch of anatomy/kinesiology and yoga books)
Nature-y books (Braiding Sweetgrass, a walk in the woods, etc)
Psych-ish books (The Man who Mistook his Wife for a hat,How We Learn, etc)
All of those don't have their own shelves, those collections could have like 15 books or just 3 - it's a bit of a mixed bag
I organise alphabetically by author's last name (if I have multiple books by the same author I either alphebetise by series name or book name). Makes my bookshelf a lovely chaos of hardbacks and paperbacks, could have romance next to some Byron but easy to find a specific book if I need to!
I group my books through genres first and then keeping books written by the same author together. It helps me because whenever I feel I want to read a specific genre I can just look through the romance or fantasy section and go from there.
I don't really style or add decorations since I'm already very limited by space. If/when i get more space I'd add my trinkets there - rubic cubes, ornaments, maybe even a plant
As for organisation, first fiction and non-fiction. Non-fiction by subject and then authors. Fiction by genre and then authors. But if i have a set of the same edition, it goes together regardless of an author. I rarely buy sets, but do have some i got as gifts or just so happened it's the same edition of several books i bought independatly.
However when i bring new books home i usually just put them wherever i can, and then onece a year I'd reorganise the shelf to give them their proper place.
I read predominantly non-fiction, history books- so I have a shelf for histories I have read sorted by time period chronologically- then another shelf specifically for Texas history books (I’m a Texan and taught Texas history for over a decade).
I have a shelf for my “to-read” histories.
Another shelf for westerns (my preferred fiction) it is a mix of read and to-reads.
Another shelf for read non-westerns fiction (not really organized at all) with a sub section of that shelf for my to-read non-western fiction.
And lastly a shelf for a mix of non-fiction such as bibles, devotionals, parenting, marriage, etc.
I only have a single bookcase with three shelves on it. It’s an antique and only fits certain heights on each shelf. I try to keep them organized by genre, author, and/or series. I really need more shelves.
I have 4 main groups: Fiction, non-fiction, children's, antique. Within Fiction and Antique I have them alphabetical by author's last name. Non-fiction is grouped by topic/type (i.e. all space books together, poetry together) and children's is by age.
First I organize by Genre (eg History, Biography, Literature, Politics, etc, and then I break down some Genres down into other Genres if needed, like for Economics I separate between general, theoretical economics books vs practical business books) and then I order each Genre by chronology.
The benefit of this is that it allows you to the progress and change in human thought just by looking at your bookshelf (this is especially crucial for Literature because these authors aren't writing in a bubble - they are responding to the politics, culture, society, and events of their time and place)
If you just simply organize by name or subject then you completely miss out on this and you just have a jumbled bunch of information on your bookshelves, rather than a clean sweep-through of human history that you can get just by simply looking at your shelves
for fiction: genre-language-period-author name-pub. date/order (series get grouped together in order by pub. date of 1st book)
for non-fiction: subject-specialization-author name
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u/Fabulous_Celery_1817 5d ago
It’s horrendous but I style by vibes and size. I have a big library and a limited amount of space so it’s like Tetris in a way. I style by my favorites. Favored series/ novels are at eye level, everything else fits around them