Organizing your books

Humor section, hmmm. I have a weird section that includes Penn and Teller books, various comix, and Dave Barry -- I guess that's a humor section. But mostly it's scattered all over. ("I Should Have Stayed Home" in travel, "The Joy of Yiddish" in languages, etc.)

I DO have a giant children's book section, though. Well, the sozlet does. I have maybe 100 books from my own childhood that are still too old for her (though I've started reading "Alice in Wonderland" to her and she likes that), but she has probably 300 books in her permanent collection and then about 25 rotating library books (we go every 2 weeks or so.)

Hardcovers are shelved in the den. Books pertaining to my business in my office, industry books of my husbands' in his office. Paperbacks, mainly fiction, in boxes in a closet in my office. More just scattered about, by the bed, in the kitchen, on tabletops. Magazines stacked in piles on the floor in the den, in my office, in the bedroom. We're surrounded by paper.

quinn - there's always the pub book give-away - unless you're looking for cash, because you know how cheap we are

I didn't get rid of all of mine, but a good chunk. Tuesday's is usually a good night, good amount of 'book people'.

Now, does anyone else have books you kind of hide in back? I used to have (it's probably still around, somewhere) a phenomenal French book of erotica which I'd bury in a place where it was not likely to be seen. Also, coming from a family which had strong, rather intellectual tastes (I still have my grandmother's copy of Jane Eyre in which she wrote dismissively on the flyleaf, "Cheap dime novel!" -- and I agree with her), I have a problem shelving the beloved junk I haven't thrown out.

Also, do you have books you've written? Where do you put them? Right where they can be seen? Where they're not exactly on front-and-center shelves but where they can't really be missed?

And finally, do you lend books easily? Or have you been burned and sworn never to lend again? Do you make borrowers sign oaths that they will return the book within 21 days or sacrifice their youngest child?

I never loan books, music, movies, anything that I will be really pissed off about not getting back.

Lord oh lord oh lord oh lord I am jeeeaaaaalloooouuuss of Sozobe's landscape of books ... :-)!

I shelve along the same lines as fbaezer - topics, nationalities and content. Fiction separated in shelves by origin (Dutch/English/French/East-European/bit of German/and separate category for multicultural-minority writers), non-fiction by a mix of theme (minorities, politics/ideology) and region (Central Europe and Balkans by country, etc). Separate shelves for travel (guides & lit), photography, cartoons, "little books", dictionaries, childrens books, journals, cookbooks, xeroxed books.

Even though I've only got a fraction of the amount some of you have, probably, I had to select and select again, first when I moved here & then when Anastasia moved in - I bookcrossed some of it away (screenname easyskanking) and put a lot of the rest into the basement - all the Dutch literature, for example (I prefer reading in English). Some other stuff must still be in boxes. (Hey! Where are my little books?!). Nothing much new has been added the last year or two, cause we've been way too broke to buy any books.

Lessee... most of my books are fiction, so those are alphabetized by author. I also have a few nonfiction books, though, and those are organized by size. Strange, it doesn't really seem like I have many books, but when I counted, I had over a hundred!

Welcome, Izzy! Be careful, they breed like rabbits. 100 today; 500 tomorrow.

Hi, Izzy, welcome to a2k! I have to blink when I see your posts because I used to use the angel avatar, before I figured out how to make my dog be an avatar. It is a bit like talking to an alter ego angel.

I organize my books in rooms, and described how at length a couple of days ago. I was adding one more sentence and my cursor froze, lost the post. Not yet in mood to elaborate that thoroughly again, but in short, my guest room is the "art room", the living room is history, the dining room is photography, kitchen, no, no books there yet, but the breakfast nook/art studio has cartons of cookbooks always changing places in the race to carton dominance. My bedroom has travel writing and fiction in stacks and stacks, the computer room
has shelves and cupboards and cartons of books on italy (excluding ital art and cooking). This isn't a giant house, the rooms are small, and life will be better one day (start the music) when I have enough shelves.

added afterthought - luckily, my architecture/landscape architecture/garden books are holding up the south wall at work...in an eighteen foot long by seven foot high set of shelves. Well, most of those are mine, about a third of them belong to my design partner.

I would be better off financially if I never bought books, used or new. But
boy would I be uncomfortable without them.

Educational, reference, and merobilia (yearbooks and photo albums) go in the den for easy access when I'm at my desk, but are in no particular order. Cookbooks, by size, are in the dining room. Most other fiction and nonfiction is in the shelves in the living room alphabetized by author and divided into three categories: Books I've read, books I've yet to read, and books I've yet to finish. The few books I've chosen not to keep get packed into bags for Goodwill, but they haven't made it out of the house yet.

Organize?

Well, I sort of kind of know where some things are.

poetry is sort of mostly together - as is drama - but by no means consistently.

Biography used to be together once.

I need HEEEEELLLLLPPPPPPPPP!

14 book-shelves bursting - and most of my work-related books are at work - in no order at all...waaaaah!

There are several methodologies, Vivien:

Do the Richard Bolles method and prioritize them so that of each ten books you decide which nine you absolutely must keep. Tell yourself as you're doing this that at the end, you will allow yourself to choose 5 out of the reject pile to "save" and keep. Also be flexible! Don't break up sets!

Put the rejects in boxes in the garage, shed, whatever. Do not open them for 6 months to a year. If you still want them then, build more shelves. If you don't, sell them and buy more books!!

I finally have my books in a kind of (eccentric) order, such that I can actually put my hands on any book I'm looking for. It took me a long life to figure out what worked for me. It's based on how my mind operates and in fact my mind operates geographically. When introduced to a new person, the first (and by far and way most important to me) question I ask is "Where're you from?" My books are arranged by the place I associate them with. (Obviously I keep all Trollopes together rather than separate them into London vs. Cotswolds vs. Norfolk etc., for example. All Spanish novels and books about Spain are together, including dictionaries, maps.) Egyptian, Turkish, and Israeli novels, maps, etc. share a couple of shelves...

Or, spend the time you would on all this folderol on reading instead!!

Tartarin that's a fascinating way of catagorising your books!

maybe I'll have a go at thinning them out using your method

Vivien -- Is Stevie Smith still read and treasured?

Those are lovely watercolors -- including a very Turneresque one, full of color! Speaking of Norfolk...!

In the rooms I'm adding on I plan to design built-in shelfs, with a nook for everything. But you know what happens to my and the mice's best laid plans - When I proudly begin stting up everything I will find one important item I omitted to plan for.

Tartarin
Tartarin, this is such an interesting topic. When I retired and moved from California to New Mexico, Asherman kept telling me to get rid of as many books as possible because they are heavy and cost a lot to move. I followed his advice, well a little bit, and got rid of most of my non-fiction paperbacks. I also donated most of my huge collection of hard back cookbooks to a charity to raise money for a cat rescue organization. I regret losing some of the cookbooks, but adjusted and they went to a good cause.

I brought all of my hardback books, mostly non-fiction, with me. Cost me a fortune because they fill 10 floor to ceiling sturdy oak bookcases that I bought for my new home. There are still some unpacked boxes of books in the garage that I haven't gotten to yet. As you suspect, my books are not yet organized following the move as I'm still unpacking boxes of other stuff and they can wait.

It's odd when I think about it, but I left furniture and lots of other things in California to make room and to pay for moving my books to New Mexico. Strange how one gets attached to books; hard to part with them and they make wonderful room decoration, too. I wonder how much I've spent buying books in my lifetime---in addition to those I used to borrow from the library?

As to organizing books, several years ago when I was having about 75 people over for a party, with a theme of dressing up or wearing something representing a book title, which guests tried to identify. I organized shelves of books whose titles made funny, provocative or interesting sentences. Knowing that people like to browse through bookcases in other people's homes, many people discovered what I had done and it was a lot of fun for the party goers.

Can all of you book lovers list book titles that shelved in sequence form interesting sentences? How many can we come up with?
---BumbleBeeBoogie

definitely

thank you they are mostly oils though!