I confess. All my life, I have struggled with how to organize the books on my shelf. Even as a child, I spent hours staring at the shelves, puzzling over the best way to sort them. Do I ignore classifications, jumbling novels with atlases, and alphabetize by author? As an adult I wondered, would the arrangement be more attractive if I pull out hardcovers and display them at eye level? Maybe I should separate fiction from nonfiction and then alphabetize. Or better yet, pull out my favorite fiction and place it at shoulder height, where it’s easiest to grab.
Every time we moved, I tried something new. Mixing poetry with religion, essays with memoir. Clustering the classics. And then I worked at a book store.
Until I was employed by Barnes & Noble, I didn’t pay much attention to how their books were organized. As a shopper, I head straight for fiction, and I never thought to care how everything else was shelved. To me, the rest of the space was simply nonfiction.
Once I started recovering customers’ abandoned books, finding their homes in the store, and then shelving them, I slowly opened my eyes to a shelving system that made sense to me. A system that classified and then alphabetized, mixed hardcovers with paperbacks, used words like “cookbooks” and “religion” instead of the 641.8 and 291.18 of the dewey decimal system. At the time, we were boxing up our own library, preparing to move across the country. With each new category I discovered, I was equipped with more shelving knowledge. So here is where David Sedaris belongs – in essays, at the end of fiction. And look, science fiction and fantasy have their own section!
I couldn’t wait to get to our new home, unpack the boxes, and settle the books on the shelves. I imagined the familiar titles in what I now considered to be their proper places.
We are all moved in now, and our best books are on the top shelf, where premium belongs. Those would be our novels – the ones that have survived 11 relocation-inspired purges. Next come science fiction and fantasy, followed by essays, then poetry. Kids’ books are on the left shelf, grown-ups’ on the right. Religion follows poetry, then memoir and biography, art and photography, regional, and finally, reference. The crafting books – soap, lotion, and jewelry making, knitting, sewing – are all in the basement. They are too messy for a respectable reading-room shelf.
The shelves are tidy, without looking artificially groomed. When I want a poetry pick-me-up, I know I’ll find Basho’s haiku in the right hand case, third shelf down, next to my namesake, Robert Burns. If I want something a sillier, I’ll move over to the left case and pull Shel Silverstein. When I’ve run out of fiction ideas from the public library, I browse our top shelf for something familiar, something I know I’ll love. A comfort book.
I confess. After years of struggling with how to organize our library, I modeled our shelves after a big box book store. And I love them.
My problem is the shelves are full.
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For many years I sorted my books by color of spine in the order of ROYGBIV. White book spines with colored lettering first, then black book spines, then books with colored spines. It was fun to see which of my friends realized that my books were sorted that way (very few noticed). To this day, although they are not sorted that way any longer, I still tend to go looking for a particular book based on the color…”It’s yellow. I remember it’s yellow,”
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I don’t feel so bad now about arranging by the way the books would look on the shelf. I love that you ordered them by color! That makes me smile 🙂
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Oh yay — we’re not the only ones! We have our CDs by colour, and I love it. I like to have our books in categories, but I also have a small bookshelf of “Sunday afternoon, pull something special off the shelf and curl up for half an hour” books. A bit of poetry, some essays, letters, slim novels.
I don’t often get the half hour, but I do like to run my eye over the shelves and catch a glimpse of old, old friends.
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Definitely not the only ones 😀
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I tend to do most of my books by classical( all encompassing in my mind) then shelved by nationality..two shelves of Canadian, two of American, two European, two of Arts etc….one whole bookshelf for cookbooks, healing and gardening…I have only a few very special children’s books on hand(low shelf) for visitors….gave away (to friends, relatives and collegues) my whole picture book collection when I retired! Wish i still had them…but they are being used and that is important.
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We have a low shelf of picture books for visitors, too. Great minds 😉
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Hi, loved this post. Come and visit my bookshelves confessions on ofglassandbooks! Bye!
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