Book Lair discussion

I will be moving in about a month and a half and will finally have space to display all my books. Right now I just have a tiny shelf with about 30 books (10 of which are favorites or ones I plan to re-read soon) and the rest are kept in sad lonely boxes.

I am just curious on how everyone organizes their books at home? Do you organize by author, genre, size, cover color, hard cover vs. paperback sections? Is there a series-section separated from all the stand-alone books? Do you have a specific to-read section separated from the rest or are all of your books just randomly on the shelves wherever you have room?

I have two very large, floor to ceiling bookcases in my living room. One has all my Hardback comic book-y things, coffee table books and hardback children and young adult books I am saving for my grandchildren.

Th other living room case has my collection of first edition hardbacks. I have Stephen King, Colleen McCullough, Amy Tan, Michael Chrichton and a few others. When you think about how prolific they are/were and how long they've been writing you can see how it's full!

In our "spare" room (into which my grown son moved in temporarily a couple of months ago) I have a shelf along the top of the walls that hold my Barnes & Noble leather collectible editions and any other leather or "old" books I've accumulated. They're very pretty. :)

In the two tall book cases in that room I have a lot of other books. No rhyme or reason, just because.

This is not mentioning the boxes and boxes of comics, comic collections and "Big" books we have in one quadrant of our attic.

Oh! All collections are in groups by author and then arranged according to publication.

I dream of a room furnished with bookshelves from top to bottom. Sadly, I don't have that possibility. So firstly I have all portuguese books on one end and then I have to admit I organize by size but try to keep it within the same genre and author.

The most important to me right now is to have the books I have not yet read separate from the rest.

But yeah, it's a mess. Hopefully one day I will be able to get decent shelves.

What is this 'organize' you speak of? LOL

I have three bookshelves from top to bottom in my living room plus one small one as you can see in my profile photo. I have a small bookcase near my desk which you cannot see here and some books scarted around the house. In this photo it looks empty but it is full all over by now and I will need more space in the time soon. I urgently need another one of those top to bottom shelves. In those I arrange my books mostly by collections and book size, but I would recommend you to arrange them by author or themes as I would do if the space permited. Those are all books bought by me. Then I have a small storehouse with used books that were offered to me or I savaged from the garbish. Plus I have a trunk full of books from my infance. Those as you can guess are just dumped without any order.

I have one big bookshelf. In it, books are first separated by language.
In each language, I separate read/TBR books. Then I have a few "big books" (hard covers, big paperbacks, special size, etc.). Those are arranged by size. Then for the rest, I arrange them by alphabetical author order.

It's in French, sorry, but you can go and have a look here:
http://www.wikibookcrossing-fr.eu/w/v...
(I'm Bailong on bookcrossing).

Hi Melas, thanks for sharing your shelf. It seems about crowded to me! ah ah
I liked the letter box specially! Didn't know there are still people who get letters these days!

That's lovely Melas! I always like when people arrange their shelves in ways other than book, book, book, but I never seem to have room to do it.

Well, I don't have that much place, but many books, so of course, it's quite crowded (and it only got worse since I took the pictures).

And yes, I still receive letters. I write some too, but not much I admit. I love receiving some, it's always a nice surprise to receive them in the age of the digital. And I noticed that if I write some letters, people will usually take the time to answer ^^.

There are also a lot of postcards. I have a few friends with whom I exchange a lot of those. I also have a few "love letters" that I keep preciously from one of my exes, who had some classical tendencies (at least as regards to art/writting) and who loved to write and draw ^^.

Two bookcases, five shelves each, so bottom three in both are hardcover or trade paperbacks, read and unread, alphabetically according to author's last name. Same goes for the top two shelves except they are mass produced paperbacks. In the bottom of the media cabinet I have a couple of series and some oversized hardcovers, no particular order. Oh yes, there's also a small pile of new hardcovers on top of the media cabinet behind the TV because of course, I have no room left! :)

Very interesting, you guys! Karen, your system is quite unique, I love it.

I definitely need to get into the habit of writing letters again. I love receiving them so I am hoping other folks do too.