I used to follow some booktubers who loved to revamp their bookshelves based on color, title, author, genre, or alphabetical order. The real debate here is: what’s your preference – neat and thoroughly organized or delightfully chaotic?
For me, the color or alphabet sorting feels like a headache waiting to happen. Instead, I prefer to sort my books by author and series, if applicable. It’s a system that just clicks with me.
What about you? Share your bookshelf organizing style, your reasons behind it, and any tips you’ve picked up along the way.
by MadMaxine666
9 Comments
I organize by genre. And within genre, I organize by author. Works for me! 🙂
I place all of books with titles I want my guests to see and be impressed by on the living room shelf. I put all the books that show I am a psychopath in my office…
By year works the best for me
Too many books to do that. We have about 3k books in a 1k square foot house lol mostly my husband’s because my ex husband used to throw my books away 😪
I organise from favourite to least favourite for the books I’ve read and from most likely to read soon to least likely to read soon for my tbr. I don’t really hoard books so it works well for me.
I organize alphabetically by author, then year of title, unless there is a series and I put all of those together under the primary author regardless of year of printing (e.g., Wheel of Time is under Robert Jordan and not Brandon Sanderson).
As far as chaos or eclectic aesthetics are concerned, I have all sorts of book styles, such as leatherbound, slipcased, trade paperback, standard hardcover, etc. I do not organize them by style, but keep them eclectic-looking within my prime organization method.
You can check my submission history to see a good idea of how I organize my shelves. Hope that helps.
I organize by paperback and hardcover and then within those, the same height. It just looks neater.
Genre and the sub genres I wish that bookstores had … then there’s a pile of 20 books stacked on the floor that are my TBR stack
I organize by read and unread.