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| Tor Conan, ERB, CAS, Moorcock... and more. |
I’m talking about how to organize your bookshelves.
I know, take a breath. Let’s review.
We have options.
Alphabetical by author, or title. By genre. Year of publication.
Do you put your favorite books on a shelf nearest to hand? Your rares and antiques behind glass or in some other high, unassailable place?
What do you put on your shelves (besides books, of course)? For example, comic books? Role-playing game books? What are your thoughts on knick-knacks or action figures, to break things up?
The possibilities are endless.
Despite my considerable misgivings I’ll tell you how I do it, and then you tell me yours. But no outrage. We can be civil about this.
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| Ahh, love that Nasmith-illustrated Silmarillion. |
The purchase gave me the opportunity to reorganize my books, an activity I find immensely relaxing and gratifying. I go into a state of flow as I do this, or perhaps active catatonia. It’s like a simultaneous mental game of Jenga (where can I fit all my Edgar Rice Burroughs books together) while remembering there are so many books I need to read, or re-read. Plus I’m reminded how glad I am to have a Ted Nasmith-illustrated copy of The Silmarillion. I need to stop now and admire The Kinslaying at Alqualondë.
It's a lot of fun. I recommend it, if you haven’t done it in a while.
Here’s how I do it.
By genre, subcategorized by author.
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| Part of my S&S bookcase... lots of REH, KEW, Anderson. |
I’ve got almost two complete shelves of Tolkien. One is on my lone upstairs bookcase, alongside my more literary collection of books.
I’ve got about two complete shelves of horror. A World War II shelf. A shelf of biographies and non-fiction. One of mostly sword-and-planet. You get the point.
Within those genres I then subcategorize, by author. So on my sword-and-sorcery shelf I’ve got about two shelves of Robert E. Howard. In general fantasy, I group all my C.S. Lewis together, next to a group of Ursula Le Guin and E.R. Eddison.
There are caveats. Many of them.
I’m forced to break my rule when the books are too large to fit on a shelf. Conan the Phenomenon by Paul Sammon resides on an unrelated shelf because it’s oversized, and won’t fit next to my other Conan books which are mostly pocket sized paperbacks. Damnit!
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| The horror! Is that a figurine in there? |
Sometimes I do break the author rule, for my own utterly singular purposes. I stuck the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy apart from my other Lewis because I didn’t want to surrender that much shelf space to titles I’m not sure I will ever read again.
I do have a shelf of classic RPGs, and with the purchase of the new bookshelf I now have a comic box of Savage Sword of Conan on that. I am thinking about digging back into these after some time in storage and wanted them close at hand.
Yes, I am aware that these are not technically “books” so I may be committing sacrilege.
Is there a better way to do all this? Almost certainly yes. It’s weird and contradictory. But it works for me. My friends are always impressed by how I can lay my hand on a given title almost immediately, without thinking.
How do you shelf your books? Do you wish to inflict harm on me for my idiosyncratic choices? Leave a comment below.
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| More books... |
17 comments:
I have shelving envy and am not ashamed to admit it. I'm glad you have the ability to sort so thoroughly using ANY method. I prefer by genre then by author then by volume (most books by an author and so on down). Unfortunately at this point the space I have is just crammed with whatever fits where, mostly 2 books deep on every shelf, usually stacked flat to take advantage of the full height of the shelf whenever possible. And no, I can't grab whatever I want when I want it anymore, except a few favorites like The Dark Is Rising that I still reread every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Not that it really matters at the moment as I am electronically hip deep in the Bible and have been for some time. Kindle tells me I'm 46% of the way through (Job), far and away the furthest I've gotten and confident I will finish. Then I will clear my shelves and start over and, yes, enjoy that zen feeling of organization, I suspect I will start with those tomes I have yet to crack in pride of place. Unless I just give it up and dive into the 3-volume Shelby Foote civil war set I have waiting for me or an enormous Tolstoy doorstop (complete and unabridged 3 novel hardcover) I've been sort of afraid of.
I just did mine alphabetically by author except for the graphic novels which were alphabetical by title. Plus, a bunch of books that I have elsewhere that I read.
It's the books I haven't read but own that are a real mess.
Dana: Credit for attempting a full read of the bible, something I have not done and no immediate plans to do so. Any words of advice were I to attempt a future journey? A Council of Elrond common trip-up etc?
Matthew: Good point with books you haven't read... debate over whether those should be immediately shelved, or kept separate (in a literal TBR pile).
I chose the 'eating an elephant' approach. Just need to take it in manageable bites. Fortunately these bites are built in - you can just read a couple of chapters a day. It will take a while, but you'll get there and honestly can read other things all you want during the rest of your reading time. When I have time (sitting in an airport or whatever) I'll read more.
So far the biggest stumbling block for me, surprisingly, was Psalms. Felt like they'd never end and so many are so very similar. Honestly I might have gone a little skim-my to wrap those up.
I have bookcases. I tend to cluster things. Genre. But there are a lot of overflow stacks, at the moment. Even occasionally by publisher - like, the Baen anthologies. I have one shelf of expensive/rarities, positioned out of the little morning sun that can shine in directly if I forgot to pull the shade.
Honestly, I need to cull a bit so I have room work a rearrangement.
There are different ways to read the Bible and they are all valid. Reading straight through is common among religious people like myself and is certainly a way to do it, but you can get hung up in like the genealogies which were important in ancient Jewish culture but may not be applicable to a modern person. (Well, they can be it's complicated.) If you are just looking for a book of wisdom Proverb's maybe a good place to start. The other thing is that to really understand you have to go deep in it. As a Christian, one of the problems is that some only have a superficial understanding of the book.
I keep all my mass market paperbacks on one bookcase and my hardcovers and trade paperbacks on another shelf, both alphabetized by author. I don't sort by genre, except for my metal zines and books, which I keep on the bottom of my CD shelves.
Paul: Would be interested to hear what your plans are if/when you decide to cull. I've got a bunch of books in a box that I no longer plan to display or read, I should probably donate them or perhaps trade for store credit. Trying to sell piecemeal on Amazon doesn't seem worth the effort.
Dave: Dedicated space only for pure metal? Love it.
I started with two 5-shelf bookcases. Then that went to three. Then four. Then five. Then six. And then I started to run out of space so I switched to smaller bookcases and added two more of those. Then I ran out of shelf space and books started piling up on the desk, on the floor, on my workout equipment, until my office was basically nothing but books. My wife finally had enough and made me move a lot of them into a storage unit. So now I am just back to the book cases being filled but I have a useable office again.
I have a similar method for sorting -- first by genre, then by author in alphabetical order. I, too, have some exceptions though that probably only make sense to me.
It would be nice if I didn't have such a wide range of interests to make it easier to organize (and so I'd buy fewer books). My sorting genres that I have separated are Lit Fic, Science Fiction/Fantasy, History, General Non-fiction, Arthurian, Westerns, Historical Fiction, and a section of just old paperback SF/fantasy from the 50s-80s.
There are two ways I've seen that I have issues with when it comes to organizing a bookshelf...all else, live and let live.
I've only seen this sort of thing on tv during an interview.
The interviewee is at home and their bookshelves in the background.
1. Books organized by color.
DAW yellow spines, green spine Fighting Fantasy and other series of the same twist excluded, that I understand and practice.
To organize by color first makes no sense other than an esthetic one, which may be the whole point of doing it that way.
I suppose one could sub-categorize like normal, but I feel authors, publishers and genres would be all over the place.
Looks pretty I guess, not very practical, however.
2. All books fore-edge out, spines to the wall.
Bonkers.
I haven't seen this a lot, but more than once for sure.
End goal, I'm not sure...book-ish nihilism?
Here's my library...it's impossible to find anything specific.
To be fair I have not had the opportunity to ask anyone why they would organize as above so if there is someone here that makes a habit of this I apologize for my ignorance.
Lift the scales from my eyes and enlighten me, I'm all ears.
Maybe you can do it like John Cusack in High Fidelity and organize them autobiographically, in order of when you bought them.
Andrew: Welcome fellow traveler. I've got a half shelf of Arthuriana myself and stuff in storage that gnaws at the back of my mind. Either need to sell it or make room for it.
Neutral Good Books: Organized by color? Spines to the wall? See that's the kind of crazy talk I mentioned at the outset of this post that gets people like me inflamed with rage. Although I have seen somewhere a photo of a DAW collector with shelves of solid yellow spines, and was impressed.
Black Cavalier: Ha! I saw that movie long ago and don't remember that bit. Brilliant in its own way.
I have 4 bookcases, plus books in storage and books just in piles. Angling for a 5th. Sort of organized by genre - have my Lovecraft, REH, Vance all shelved together. Not to fussy about it though.
I see you've collected a lot of the same REH paperbacks I have. One advantage of being born in the 70s - when I came of age as a reader in the 80s, lots of that stuff was readily available in used bookstores.
I have an good collection of Library of American books and I keep them together in places. I have some various collections of comic strips together (like the Complete Peanuts--all volumes). Beyond these, my shelves are kind of random by size. I also have a good chunk of my books at my office. I would like to organize by genre, but I don't know if I'll ever do that.
Interesting. I didn't know personal library organization schemes were so controversial.
Mine is currently all alphabetic by author last name, except for religious texts and reference books--they get a separate section. My to-read shelf is altogether separate.
I might try Deweying the main/"already read this" shelf at some point, though if a library has predominately one kind of genre, you might want a more detailed organization scheme to accompany it.
Latest trend on HGTV is to put books spine in. Hope they only do it for homes for sale because that’s insane.
Jason: Complete run of Peanuts? Nice. I've got a paperback or two, plus I believe a Wizard of Id.
Jay: Oh, they are. I've seen some comments on Youtube that blow my hair back. And I like your idea of a separate TBR shelf. Hmm....
Anonymous: Spine in? That strikes me as something only a non-reader would do. Other than some shite aesthetic design reason, why?
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