Shelving Systems

I've always been fascinated by how people shelve their books, and I am an admitted judger of others' home libraries. In New York, I had such limited space that I could only keep one bookcase of books (I made a lot of trips to The Strand to sell off old titles), which were all alphabetized by author. In our first house in Maryland, I had a few Billy bookcases and a few ladder bookcases generally broken out into fiction and non-fiction, with classics and Irish lit (we both had minors/concentrations in Irish Studies... we have a LOT of Irish lit books) pulled out.

In our new house, we have a 12-foot wall in the dining room that was just crying out for bookshelves, so my amazing, incredible, bearded husband set out to build me industrial-style shelves with stained boards and black pipes. (A later post will follow on the actual building of the shelves, but right now he's actively avoiding all shelf-related speak... it was a bit of a frustrating process, complete with exploded spray paint can in the garage).

The best part: I can finally unpack my books after they've been in storage for 18+ months. Which brings me to my question: how do you organize your shelves? I've heard of people who keep TBR shelves separate from their main books (Leah, I'm looking at you); I don't do this, though I do keep unpublished ARCs on a separate "to-do" shelf in my office. I know some people mix classics and fiction together, alpha by author; I also don't do this (sorry, but those Coralie Bickford Smith Penguins really look best when shelved all in a row, folks). Nonfiction is interesting in its opportunity for in-depth categorization: do you create a "history" shelf, or a "World War II history shelf"? Of course, it all depends on what you own.

Here's where I netted out:

I settled on a basic fiction/classics/nonfiction system (the case on the left is all fiction, with Irish lit and Irish history sharing the bottom shelf; the case on the right is half classics and half non-fiction).

Irish Lit and Irish History

Fiction is alpha by author, with a few exceptions where spacing didn't allow for that to work well (I'm looking particularly at that horizontal stack of Robert Jordan tomes). Mass markets, though, are pulled out and stacked on the ends of the shelves because I hate the way mass markets sit when shelved vertically.

The classics are broken into series (see again: Coralie Bickford Smith editions, and those black-spine Penguins), and those not in series are alpha by author across one shelf. Antiquities (The Odyssey, The Illiad, The Aeneid, and--because where else do you shelf them?--Harrius Potter et Philisophi Lapis and my Latin-English dictionary) are pulled out into their own stack, and authors whose works we own major collections of (Shakespeare, Hemingway and Fitzgerald) are shelved independently based on shelf space.

Antiquities + Books in Latin
(because where else do you shelve them?)

Classics Collections

Poetry has its own (small) stack, though Irish poets are--you guessed it--with the Irish lit.

History, essays and memoirs are grouped together and honestly not even alphabetized by author. Science books, albeit a small collection of them, are pulled out into their own section. Sailing books, self-help-esque (The Happiness Project, The Art of Happiness) are similarly separated. The Beard has his own mini-stack of trivia books on the main shelves (all his Star Wars books--of which there are many--are in his office downstairs).

Upstairs on my dresser I keep a small stack of "books I'd like to read next," and for pure decorating purposes, I have a ladder bookshelf of brightly colored books in the master bedroom. Up in my office (I work from home) are a few shelves of business books (everything from financial management to non-profit foundation law to Bill Clinton's Giving) and a separate bookcase of upcoming ARCs and books on deadlines. I clear out that latter shelf every month based on pub date.

The moral of this, of course, is not just that everyone shelves their books differently--of course based on their preferences and collections--but that no one will be able to find a book in this house except for me and maybe The Beard (maybe). Well that... and the fact that I have a LOT of books to read.

I've seen some people shelve their books by color, by genre, and by any number of other categorizations... so, tell me:

How do you shelve your books?