Sorting Books

Im in the process of thinking this through myself, having boxes of books all over the place. I also tend to group my books, but more broadly. Cookbooks are together, as are fiction, and writers tools, ie dictionaries, style handbooks, and so forth. Also type, languages, religion and gardening. My other reference books I tend to sort by size and group, depending on the shelving. I can usually remember where a book is, what shelf and where on the shelf as I tend to remember the bindings rather than the covers.
Good luck! Its a big, but satisfying job (?)

 

I used to sort my books by author w. a secondary genre system. But I no longer sort my books at all. They're just haphazardly shelved in rows and stacks w. no system whatsoever. My school books live in stacks on the floor either in my room or the living room. It's a mess.

 

The big sort in our house is between professional/traditional Jewish scholarly books and other books. After that, we sort roughly by genre/topic. But we just have too many to waste time with more specific sorting, like alphabetizing or by date or Dewey Decimal or something.

 

My woman and I have separate bookshelves. A shelf of professional stuff for her, a shelf of professional stuff for me, a shelf of fiction for her, a shelf of cheesy '80s action DVDs for me.

The cool part about cheapo Target / Ikea bookshelves is that you can line a whole wall with them for a hundred bucks, fill them up and they don't actually look too bad.

As far as I how I sort stuff, I tend to place things that I use often at eye and chest level, fancy stuff up high and the rest of the junk on the lower shelves.

 

Cookbooks are on the kitchen bookshelf. Most of the YA books are on a smaller bookshelf in the living room. All my Buffy books and DVDs are grouped together, and all my fantasy/fairy tale books have a shelf of their own.

Everything else is on the other side of the kitchen shelf, or a long bookshelf by the front door, sorta-kinda by genre.


The thing with sorting books...I like them to look aesthetically pleasing more than anything. So, while they're roughly together by genre, they're mostly shelved in order of book height. Hard covers first, then paperback.

 

Mmm, does anybody use those super OCD color dots on their book spines?

I've seen that before. Kinda person that covers their couches in plastic.

 

I sort books by getting rid of them.

I love reading books. I just don't have a lot of space for them.

 

It's an automatic process, they're listed in the order in which I read them last. The Kindle even has a built-in search function.

*ducks*

 

When we had the new kitchen installed, the kitchen guy suggested adding a built in shelf for books. This is overflowing with cookbooks. We have 3 other shelves in the house and 2 more in my office - most of *my* books on the shelf in the office, kinda grouped by author. Inside is a hodgepodge of kids books, travel books and various bits and pieces. So, not really very organised at all!

 

I return them to the Library where they dutifully sort them by Genre and Author's last name.

No really! I read constantly but only own a shelf or so of books; my keepers. After a few moves I realized how much space they take up so I gave most of them away.

I've separated Non-Fiction and Fiction onto two different shelves but that's it.

 

I worked part time at a library for awhile shelving books and was actually very good at it. I could shelve quite a bit of books accurately in a short amount of time. After being there for a few months, I knew the shelves well and just knew where the books belonged. I noticed that I arrange my own books according to the dewey decimal system. I guess it's a habit.

 

I took everything that I hadn't read in the last 5 years down to Goodwill. Reference books and technical manuals are on his & hers shelves. Books that I tend to reread regularly get shelf space, the rest are in boxes in the basement.

 

Hopefully, you don't have a huge selection of non-fiction at home. Remembering all the codes would be a bitch.

 

I

It's not perfect but its close.