Book organization

[Vlad!]

I've been thinking some about how I arrange my books on my shelves. This is one of those subjects that in theory seems straightforward but then gets eclipsed by physical reality and hidden complexity.

Initially, I figured I would just put my books in straight-up alphabetical order. However, after doing this I found that I had two types of books that this wouldn't work for: reference books, which generally don't have an author listed, and technical/how-to books, whose author I likely don't remember when I want to find the book. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule as well (Mike Gunderloy, for example). So do I file Gunderloy's Coder to Developer next to Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, or should I put it next to Joel Spolsky's The Best of Software Writing? I decided that the top shelf of my brown bookshelf would be for reference books (because I can easily reach it from my recliner if I want to look up a word) and the top shelf of my yellow bookshelf would be for technical books.

The second problem I ran into was that some books just don't plain sit well next to other books, physically speaking. Although Tolkien's Lord of the Rings anthology might belong next to my massive Rex Stout collection alphabetically, Stout wrote paperback novels and Tolkien's work is more what I would call a tome. That placement would go over about as well as seating Nero Wolfe next to Elrond Halfelven at a dinner party. So I figured I would have some shelves for large books, which has the added benefit that it seems fitting to situate Tolkien's work next to my Chronicles of Narnia anthology. However, this also separates some authors into two different places, since for example I have a large tome with all of Arthur C. Clarke's short stories but then several small paperbacks with many of his various novels.

It also just plain feels odd to me to have books about religion or politics nestled up against science fiction or murder mysteries. And my religion books are sort of like my programming books in that mentally I index them by title or subject rather than authors, unless the author is particularly well-known. So I decided to separate by fiction and non-fiction (and non-fiction, as mentioned above, is broken into my techinical books which go on the first shelf of my yellow bookshelf and all other nonfiction which start on the second shelf).

So it seems like I have things set now...but it seems like half the time when I want a book I still end up scanning half the books on the shelf before I find the right one (though I do generally choose the right shelf, which is a step in the right direction).

I need a librarian.

[enemy anemone]

I would love to be able to organize shelves like this.

[Vlad!]

Seems like it serves more of an aesthetic than rational purpose. You'd have to remember what color the book's jacket was in order to locate it!

[enemy anemone]

I think I tend to search by the book's appearance anyway. that and where I last saw it, which I remember based on what it looks like.

[AldaForPresident]

I would love to be able to organize shelves like this.

That is awesome.

I don't own a ton of books because I don't have any place to put them; I usually get books from a secondhand store and trade them in and get more and trade those in. But the ones I do own I have sort of organized by subjet/genre.

[Vlad!]

But the ones I do own I have sort of organized by subjet/genre.

I tried that, but then I wound up saying "did I file that under general fiction or sci-fi?" and stuff like that.

[NewDimension]

If I owned a lot of books I'd probably organize them according to the subject/genre. And for books that could fit into several subjects/genres I'd probably just assign them to one and try to remember where I put them (it's not hard for me to remember what a book looks like even if there's a lot of books to sift through). But if I owned several books by the same author, I'd probably lump all of that author's books together even if that author wrote books that could belong to a different genre. If I owned many books by many of the same authors, I'd probably make a section of books for "authors." If the physical differences in the size of the books looked awkward or uneven, I'd probably just arrange the books a little differently.

If you can't remember where you put certain books, you could always make an electronic list of all the books you own and organize the list alphabetically and/or according to the subject/genre and/or author, and then assign a letter/number/color to the section on the bookshelf, and then when you want to find a particular book and you don't want to search through the bookshelf you could just consult the list-- especially if you printed it out and kept it near the books. Of course you'd have to update the list periodically, especially if you buy books quite frequently. And it can be a hassel to continually look through a list to find the book you want. There probably wouldn't be much of a difference in the amount of time you would spend looking through the bookshelf than if you looked through the booklist. That's why I think it's usually easier to just memorize the general location of the book.

[Vlad!]

Yeah, I was thinking that this whole thread is just a testament to the usefulness of e-readers such as the Kindle. So far I've resisted the temptation to buy one of those, but I have to admit that the convenience factor is nice.

And NewDimension, I don't have quite enough books yet to justify creating a card catalog!

My grandmother is an author, former librarian, and lifelong bibliophile. Before they moved to a nursing home, my grandparents' house had more books than many public libraries. She generally stuck to an alphabetically-by-author theme, though she had some genre-specific enclaves (I always seemed to wind up in the guest room that had the science fiction books, and I like to think that was intentional). The fact that the collection spanned multiple rooms made it a little difficult; if you were in the room that had E-P, it was a little hard to tell where A-D would be hiding (and whether you would have to move a cat to get there). I asked her once if she had ever considered a less hodgepodge organization and she gave me the well-tried Librarian Look and said "Nathan, when you have several thousand books, you can arrange them however you want". Then she smiled and said "besides, if I could always find the book I was looking for on the first try I wouldn't stumble upon the book I really wanted to read but didn't know to look for".

I hope someday to be even slightly as awesome as my grandma.

[AldaForPresident]

Yeah, I was thinking that this whole thread is just a testament to the usefulness of e-readers such as the Kindle. So far I've resisted the temptation to buy one of those, but I have to admit that the convenience factor is nice.

I wish I knew someone who actually owned a Kindle, because I want to try one but I'd be mortally afraid of buying one. Most of the time my thought is "Ugh, e-readers!" but then when I'm trying to prop the 1000-page Collected Stories of Edith Wharton up while I eat lunch, I always think "E-readers!" rather wistfully.

That's really cool about your grandmother. I think I get my attitude about the ownership of books from mine also- she reads all the time but I don't think she owns any books because she gets them all from the library. The other day she had gotten me a book from the library and I mentioned how much I'd like to own it, and she was like "Why? They take up too much room. It's not like you can't check it out again." Heehee.

[Vlad!]

I'm not sure how close the nearest library was to my grandma, but it was probably pretty far, because she lived out in the sticks in Akron, Ohio and so she was far from everything.

If you go to various big-chain bookstores they will have e-readers for you to try. Barnes and Noble should have the Nook available, and last time I was at Borders they had two Sony e-readers to play with. The Kindle and its kin are generally quite acceptable at what they do, and the e-ink screens are like paper in terms of glare resistance and ease of reading (the touchscreen ones like Sony's touch reader have a little more trouble with glare, but that's only when you're in direct sunlight...and the ability to touch a word and look it up might (depending on your vocabulary) be worth it).

Like you, I'm sort of on the fence. I like the tactile sensation of having a book in my hands, but there are times when an e-reader just seems like it would work out well, such as on an airplane.