Arranging Books

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I have a new bookcase and about 250 books of literature to organise. There's a mix of hardcover and softcover, mostly 19C but including everyone from Milton and Chaucer to Woolf and Plath. I'm excited to start but looking for suggestions:

- Authors alphabetical, with their titles alphabetical?
- Authors alphabetical, titles chronological?
- Genre?
- Era?
- Aesthetics? (Let's be real, there's an art to visual design)

My Brontë books have their own cabinet, so this doesn't include those. They have their own shrine.

Oh I just saw I can make a poll here - but I don't know how. I'll look at that later.

Either subjects in an area and then titles, or use the Biblical method of arranging them.

Books. I like books. But there is one problem with books. They are heavy. Most of the book cabinets on the market seem to be very flimsy. Many are made of pressed wood. And they bend under weight. I hate that. When I built my home, I created a built- in bookcases. They were made from 2x12 lumber. They do not bend. I can climb on them and put my full weight on them and they do not move. The built in bookcases are over 40 years old and they remain very solid.

How do I organize my books?

I have one stand alone cabinet for my old books. These are books published in the 1800's or earlier. The oldest book I have is 1,555. In old books the date is written in Roman Numerals. Therefore you have to be able to read Roman Numerals in order to figure out the date. And many people cannot read Roman Numerals. One of the interesting things about the earliest books is that many were written in Latin. But the date of publication was not written in Roman Numerals but rather used the decimal system.

Now because old books started increasing in price about the time I started to collect them, I was priced out of collecting them. I still like old books but I just could no longer afford them. So I changed my special interest. I started buying leather bound books. I have over a hundred of these. And I group them together on the shelves. It is aesthetically a very beautiful collection. The only thing one needs to be careful about is not packing them in too tightly. Otherwise the leather books binding will try to fuse together.

I arrange all my fiction by author's surname and then year of publication if I have more than one book by the same writer. For non-fiction, I arrange them by genre in alphabetical order and by author's surname. Works for me.

Thanks everyone! I'm plugging away at it now. This is a very heavy bookcase and it's certainly not my only one, but I'm trying to set up a second reading room (third, actually?) now that my flood repairs are done.

MG, The books I'm arranging today are all fiction, so thanks for the suggestion but I couldn't go by subject.

Jimmy, I'd LOVE to see your collection of books. I'm a bibliophile too and despite the cost it's still my special interest to own what I read. I can read Roman Numerals and I think your books sound beautiful!

AMB, Thank you as well. That's pretty much what I'm doing. It worked out that I can fit a century per shelf so far, except that 20th and 21st share a shelf since I don't have as many. My top two shelves are 19C since I read those the most, then arranged by author and publication date unless I need to rearrange one or two for by size for aesthetics.

Under that I'm putting 18C which takes a whole shelf, and then classics to 17C underneath.

I have a shelf for French which I'm separating from English. It only fills half a shelf but I can do some artistic stuff to fill the space.

At the bottom I'll do my 20 / 21 century.

Anyone want some Jane Austen? I really don't like her and don't even think I'll keep them.

The Biblical method works ok.

"Seek and ye shall find".

That's how they were stored for almost a year because of my flood. Maybe there's some symbolism in that!

I realize you have already solved this problem by now, but I tend to organize mine by publisher, then alphabet. At least, if I have a bunch that are part of one line. For example, I have an entire bookcase of just Penguin Classics. I like seeing all the uniform spines together. It excites me to have a uniform design with different titles and authors, each implying their own world hidden behind the conformity.

Similarly, I have Penguin 20th Century Classics together, and Penguin Modern Classics together. Same with Vintage (International), Modern Library, New York Book Review, and others.

Other books I put together if they are a similar topic (such as books on musicians).

I can ask my Mum as she used to work in a library.

Not sure, as I don't ever organise books. I don't have many books to organise, except writing books, but when I try to make an effort to organise my writing books they still end up in a mess without me realising, even though I'm the only one who touches them.

I usually like to organise my DVD box sets in season order, although it doesn't stay that way.

I don't really sort my books/DVDs in any particular order...I think the most sorting I do is I will make a nice little pile of stuff that I'm interested in consuming soon (or currently consuming).

I like to keep collections together though, like I'll put stuff in the same series together, and try my best to keep things that are by the same author/director together (which is a lot more difficult for movies, since a lot of series will have sequels by different directors).

Other than that, I keep things pretty loose. I'll have some general organization, like one area for childrens' stuff/family friendly, an area for seasonal/holiday stuff, an area for Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style stuff, an area for RPG stuff, and an area for comic books: which has its own sub-sections, like a manga section, Batman section, Dick Tracy, etc. etc.

A lot of times, with books, I will try to sort so that the largest books are to the left, and the smaller ones to the right. Some of those books can have some pretty large dimensions, especially hardcovers in the comics section. I think the widest/tallest book I have is probably an old collection of Buck Rogers newspaper strips (and I'm sure they're still printed smaller than they were originally in the papers).

ATM I have one bookcase for general nautica; one for rope works, sailmaking, rigging and such; one for arts and music; one for nature - flowers, birds, gardening, hunting, mushrooms etc; and two for fiction. And two for cartoons.
Within the bookcases I arrange mainly by author, but for non fiction usually by subject. I don't usually care about arranging them alphabetically or by chronology.
I try to optimize the space by putting similarly sized books on the same shelf, but this often conflicts with my arrangement "rules".

/Mats

I've got three bookshelves full of books. Many - but not all - are arranged by author.