How do you organize your books?

[WeAreGoingToEatYou]

Are you picky about the way your books are arranged, or do you simply throw them on the shelf? Any particular method of organization?

[Donald M.]

I cram them on the shelf until there's no more room. I have just the one bookshelf, but it's deep enough I can stack more books in front of the ones standing upright. The result resembles a unbroken great wall of reading material. I'd get another bookcase but I don't really have any place to put it.

At any rate, I don't collect books, I read them. Save for a select few that are very special to me, when I'm done with them they either wind up in the trash (I can be tough on books, paperbacks especially.) or donated to Goodwill and the like. Thus the lack of organization.

As they're just waiting there to be read and are in no way a collection and the order I read them in is dictated purely by whim, I see no reason to organize them.

That aforementioned wall of books can make finding a particular book hard though, when I remember I own it and decide to read it. Usually I'll happen on something else interesting in the pile first. There are books on my shelf I was all hot to read when I first picked them up that are still sitting on my shelf unread because they're buried too deep, behind too many other interesting books.

[mikekerr3]

Organize my books?

[FanboyStranger]

Fiction: alphabetically by author, then in chronological order of his/her novel's date of publication, followed by any compilations of his/her work (unless its arranged chronologically), then biographies of the author, if applicable.

Non-fiction: Thematically, then chronological order of publication within the theme. (I have tons of history and philosophy books.)

It's all very anal and time-consuming, but it's worth it when I can pull something off a shelf in two seconds.

[rick]

I'm scary, all of my books, including the valuble ones all sit in a big, unorganized, unbagged series of piles covering a couple of bookcases.

It scares my friends who seriously collects, but since it's all stuff I don't plan to sell, it works for me.

[Jessica Drew]

As best I can, I organize by category: horror, music, comic, poetry, theatre, film, miscellaneous, and TOO LARGE FOR THE REGULAR-SIZED SHELF. Within those categories, I organize by author in that I'll put Stephen King's books together, Lester Bang's books together, etc..., but I don't organize them alphabetically.

[howyadoin]

Generally they're organized by author. And within those, some of the books are organized chronologically, but not many.

Oh, and all of my art and music books are in a separate bookcase.

[Slam_Bradley]

They're in boxes. Except the ones on the bookcases. Or the ones in piles in corners.

Organized? What does this mean?

[jesse_custer]

I don't have enough shelf space for all my bookz.

[Shellhead]

I only have six shelves worth of bookcase, and the rest of my books are packed away in cardboard boxes. One shelf for horror, one shelf for cyberpunk, one shelf for fantasy, and one shelf for the rest of my science-fiction. Then there is one shelf of reference books (dictionary, thesaurus, accounting textbooks, the I Ching, etc) and one shelf of miscellaneous hardcovers of any genre.

[Gordon Smith]

Are you picky about the way your books are arranged, or do you simply throw them on the shelf? Any particular method of organization?

I manage to keep my Destroyer collection, my reference works on mythology and my Tolkien-related stuff reasonably well-organized in the book-case which is just outside my bedroom door. I keep my new purchases somewhat organized in the sense they are physically separated from older buys (well, most of them). As a rule of thumb, however, I just throw a book into a convenient space when I'm not reading it. This is how I ended up with an entire room dedicated to book storage, books on my dresser drawers, books beside my bed, books at the foot of my bed, books in the bathroom, books on the coffee table, books on the kitchen table, books out in boxes in the garage, books in boxes at the homes of friends who were foolish enough to lend me some space, books in my room-mates' bedroom. With rare exceptions as noted above, I tend to not know not where any individual book is at a given moment, so I guess you could say my collection isn't very organized.

[Infra-Man]

Alphabetically by author and then by original publication date. Now that I'm out of shelf space, though, there are books stacked in front of and on top of the organized books.

[Oblivion87]

I usually just group them by author or alphabetically.

[The Black Guardian]

I'm really quite anal about my books, and I never get rid of any. When my wife and I first started living together, I caught her throwing out some of my books and almost ended our relationship over it. I read them so carefully that I can complete a paperback without making a single crease in the spine, though I don't really care if I do.

I tend not to buy hardcovers, if I can help it, preferring the portability of paperbacks.

I group them into three main categories: fiction, non-fiction, role-playing games (rules/accessories).

The Fiction category is subdivided into: classics, science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc. Each subcategory is ordered by author or series name and chronological order (eg, all Wild Cards novels together; all Dragonlance novels together; all Forgotten Realms novels together; etc.).

The Non-Fiction category is arranged by subject, then by author. I don't really have many non-fiction books; they get not quite two tiers on a set of shelves. The two main subcategories are science and history. History is divided into Russian and Other subcategories.

Two entire sets of shelves are devoted to role-playing games, divided further by game genre and system (eg, all sci-fi games together, then all Rifts, Shadowrun, etc. together; all fantasy together, then all D&D, WW, etc. together).

[Roquefort Raider]

Organizing books is almost as fun as reading them!

The "living room" books are organized by themes that sort of fit in the shelves:
general literature (3 shelves, spilling over now);
religion/mythology;
Tolkien/Homer/Norse sagas/Shakespeare/Poe/Theater/Poetry (thrown in together because of space considerations)
History (2 shelves, soon to spill over the 4th general lit shelf)
Dictionaries
Big Artsy Books That Fit Nowhere Else (including fine arts, music, etc)
Science
Geography + big animal books
Cooking (that shelf is hidden behind doors).

The "Family room" books try to keep shelves consistant, and are often organized by series. The paperbacks are also two books deep on each shelf.
Bob Morane (the bottom of the first shelf are actually Star Trek novels)
Artima comics digests
Language, computers and assorted "how to" books
Essentials and Showcase collections
My Tintin weekly collection
My Pif gadget weekly collection
My Editions Héritage translations of Marvel comics (2 shelves)
French bandes dessinées (4 big shelves. These are books I inherited from my childhood days so most spines are pretty damaged).

The bedroom is where I keep the SF and fantasy stuff :
trade paperbacks and hardcovers of several comics (two shelves)
Novels (6 shelves, double-rowed, alphabetical order)
Frank Herbert (one shelf)
Michael Moorcock (one shelf)
Robert E. Howard (one shelf)
my old Perry Rhodan series (two shelves).

There is also an informal "to read" shelf...