The Next Best Book Club discussion

Yeats confuses the heck out of me, but I enjoy it. Beautiful language.

I only understand it because I'm taking an Irish lit class, but he wrote when Ireland was becoming Anglicized and modernized, both of which he was opposed to, because he felt that a communal heritage (like Gaelic mythology) could help unify the people. He gets a bit more jaded in his later poems.

Well I now have a name for the small extention to my living room.LOL This is actuall the old part of the house and was the origional living room. The house was added on to before we bought it. The small part of the living room has four built in bookcases. It is a little on the narrow side and only has a recliner and rocking chair in it. I am now going to start calling it the Library. Most of the books that are visable on the shelves are Colorado History and Mom's Cookbook collection. The closed section at the bottom are full of books waiting for donation to our local book exchange and the library friends book drive.

Most of my newer books (other than text books) are audio books and they are all on my external hard drive.

Most of my audio books are mystery books so I am not sure what that says about me.

Organization...hummmm

My books are organized by author - if there is a bunch by the same author they are together... otherwise they are bunched how they best fit and look okay on the shelves...

my to be read books are all stacked on a bookcase in the corner...

My bookcases say - that I read a lot and am good at stacking.....LOL

"Good at stacking." That's me too! My husband isn't allowed to touch my bookcases anymore. He's had everything come sliding out on him a few too many times!

My bookself has a mixture of things on it including Harry Potter, Twilight (just the first 1), All of Matthew Reilly's Books (but 1 due out this month and 1 I can't get my hands on) all of the Women's Murder Club series plus a few books on beading and kniting and other hobbies that I have...

Come to think of it I need a new bookshelf...

Becky wrote: "How does everyone organize their shelves (when they are organized at all? *pointed look at myself*)?

By author?
Genre?
Size?
Color?
Favorite status?
Series?
Or not at all?"

I organise by series... by that I mean I place all the books from on series together and all the rest get placed around them.

I gues the main thing that my bookshelves say about me is that I am an escapist. Almost all of my books are fiction. Less than five percent are non-fiction, and I've probably read less than half of them.

My fiction covers science fiction (contemporary and vintage), pulp fiction (E.R. Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, Robert E. Howard), fantasy (with a heavy bias towards dark or urban), classics, along with children's and Young Adult. Hmmm...I think even my fiction is "escapist". I don't have much contemporary or literary fiction.

I think my shelves also say I may need medication for my obessive compulsive organizing. I will spare you the details, as it would require a phonebook sized post.;)

My bookshelf shows my steadily changing interests and progression through the whole of waterstones, barnes & noble, borders and the strand! I need to buy some new ones, I now have stacks of books all over the living room table which isn't a good look.

Several years ago I streamlined my book shelves. I rarely keep books now, but willingly pass them on to others who can't afford or have no way to get books.I have been going to the library lately, but I am getting frustrated, as they usually are not on the shelves.

Fiona, I'm with you on that!! Disorderly bookshelf means Loved bookshelf!!

I think my bookshelves tell me that I need more bookshelves! They are overflowing and two deep...which I hate cause I can't see all the books!

I have my shelves sorted by genre-author of sorts. Hardbacks then paperbacks. Now that I have an entire thin bookshelf freed for more books...I gotta consider what ones I truly want there. (aka book shopping spree!)

Becky wrote: "How does everyone organize their shelves (when they are organized at all? *pointed look at myself*)?

By author?
Genre?
Size?
Color?
Favorite status?
Series?
Or not at all?"

I organize it by size with the ones I read first.
-Paperback
-Trade paperback
-Harcover
-Vintage Hardcover

The dictionaries, thesauri, language etc...

All my school books are in my office that I use for reference

Becky wrote: "How does everyone organize their shelves (when they are organized at all? *pointed look at myself*)? ... Or not at all?"

Guilty as charged... I try to be organized, but then can't find the book I'm looking for, pull everything out to find it -- double rows of books due to minimum bookshelves :-( -- and can't be bothered to be organized again... the shelves look like those puzzles where you have to fit the shapes in without leaving spaces.


Fiona said: My bookshelf is currently a jiggsaw puzzle of books wedged in whatever way

Snap! Saw your message after I wrote mine!

I just recently reorganized mine (new pictures in the "Show us your bookcase" thread!) and they are in a semi-sort-of order.

By that I mean:
- They are now designated by "read" status, with 1 bookcase with "read" books and another with "to read" books, mainly.
- Except if:
a) It belongs on my King shelf or with my Austen books
b) An unread book is part of a series I've mostly read

Other than that, they are in no particular order, but I tried to keep the MMPB's together and the trade size and HC's together for efficiency. :)

Kim ,

You have described me to a tee!! Very seldom read nonfiction although I enjoy historical fiction. I don't like anything to do with vampires, science fiction, authors who have a book once a month. Books written by more than one person. I try to read books before they become popular once they do I probably won't read. All these quirky little rules... What does say about me..?

I have no idea what mine says about me (besides being a HP fan since I have on bookshelf dedicated to it). It's organized after authors surname and is basically a mixture of everything; colours, sizes (hardcover, paperback), languages (Swedish and English), genres (fantasy, general fiction, romance, ya, classics, crime (even though I rarely read that), non-fiction, and etc).

I like diversity :D

I definitely organise by author, though I organise everything (cd's, dvd's etc) by title or artist alphabetically. In terms of books though it goes by auther then by series eg. Sookie Stackhouse books go under H but then they get kept in the order of the series.

I have some slight OCD tendancies in terms of those sorts of things.

If you looked at my bookshelve, you would think that I have gone to school way too much, do a lot of politics and economics. LOL. I await anxiously the day when my pleasure books out number my "work" books!!! it shall come sooN!

I'm thinking my bookshelves might say "What drugs are you on?"...especially if you consider the sequence in which some of the books have been read. Then there's the appearance of almost total lack of organization. They match my "filing system" which consists of stacks of paper on every available horizontal surface. I know which stack and approximately where in the stack important stuff is, so don't rearrange my stacks...or my bookshelves.

My book shelf says that I read alot but I mainly stick to one or two genres. A habit I need to break. So if anyone have any book recommendations in the genres romance, non-fiction, sci-fi,fantasy or thriller. Please tell me.

mmm my book shelfs are divided (and I'm trying very hard that they stay kind-of like that) in fiction and non-fiction. The non-fiction part talks about my profession, I'm a historian and I love art history so that book shelf is full of history and art history books. The fiction one has a lot of things but I think that if someone outside looked at it would find: history fiction, vampires (a lot of Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer, Charlane Harris, Elizabeth Krostova), fantasy (Harry Potter mostly), some clasics (like Jane Austen, Milton, Lewis Carroll, Homer), some detective stories (I'm a Sherlock Holmes and Hercules Poirot fan!), some romance, poetry...
What does that says about me? Don't know actually...

Ti, it says you enjoy a wide range of genres :)

I have all my books arranged by genre (history, political science, the Middle East, fiction, memoirs, travel, etc...) though every time I see a picture of someone's library who has their books arranged by color, I fall in love.
I toy with the idea of arranging my books like that, but I don't think I can handle splitting up series. Now that I've written it down, I hope that doesn't make me sound crazy!

My bookshelves are overflowing and there is little organization to them at all. I think the Harry Turtledove novels are all together but it's all pretty much random otherwise.

So perhaps I'm random and disorganized? Perhaps? Probably.

I live in a small NYC apartment, so the only thing left on my bookshelves are books I feel I don't want to recommend and give away.

Becky wrote: "How does everyone organize their shelves (when they are organized at all? *pointed look at myself*)?

By author?
Genre?
Size?
Color?
Favorite status?
Series?
Or not at all?"


Well, I just got a second shelf and here is how it works.
shelf 1: Stephen King novels.
shelf 2: my series[inkspell/inkheart, LotR, Harry Potter:]
shelf 3: my new books that i haven't read yet, and it seems most are just general fiction novels.
shelf 4: horror/mystery/true crime [ dean koontz, ann rule, etc.:]

I usually sort them from smallest to biggest, and it usually ends with a high hardcover if i have one. I think it looks pretty tidy!

If I had more books I would probably alphabetize them, buuut i'm nowhere near that and i think the size differences would drive me mad. you never know though! hah

Ouch. Well, the good news is that I finally have been able to have built-in shelves put in one room, an office/study. That takes care of maybe a third of our books, in here there is one wall [in back of me:] that is mostly dedicated to mystery/detective stories.
The wall in front of me is filled from right above the computer monitor to the ceiling, mostly literary fiction, and some non fiction. One free standing bookcase, tall is half miscellaneous, half science fiction. In the hallway there are 5 tall bookshelves filled to the brim and above...history, mostly divided between French, English, Greek, and Roman history. Some American history thrown in too. More literary fiction as well.

I converted a hall closet to book shelves, sides and back floor to ceiling...that's a kind of catch all, everything from Harry Potter to Jean Auel.

Oh, a tallish bookcase in the kitchen filled with herbal, cooking, and [ugh:] diet books. In the bedroom we have only one tall bookshelf with some religious books, non fiction, and miscellaneous.
In the upstairs hall I have my 200 book Star Trek collection taking up most of one tall bookcase. :) There are three more shorter shelves down that upstairs hall with more herbal books, and some nature books. Oh, and another glass enclosed bookcase with my great-grandfather's books...he loved history and poetry, so that's mostly what is in there.

That's all I can think of right at the moment. I have about one-third of our books listed on GR, it became too tedious to list them on both Library Thing and here, so I stopped this list.

I just throw them in. No order what so ever. What ever fits on which shelf.

With mine, you'd be able to tell that I'll read pretty much everything and anything. There's a shelf for classics, history, paranormal, autobiographies, fiction, etc.

I have to keep my series books together, and Stephen King (well, King and Joe Hill) has his (their) own Shelf of Honor. Of course, King books comprise a very large part of my collection, and I like just looking at them, so I have to keep them together.

I also have a Harry Potter shelf, which contains two full sets - one US, and one UK. Then I have a fantasy shelf, with again two sets of LOTR books, one omnibus and one three book set.

And other than keeping series together, and separating read books from to-read books, everything else is arranged where ever it will fit.

I am too anal retentive for words, but have eclectic taste in books.

Its hard to say what my bookshelf says about me since i dont have one but if i did have one it would definately say "i like fantasy".My room is littered with them.I try to expand from just fantasy but it like trying to solve a rubix cube,its hard.Humor and horror are ok but tend to lack a proper storyline.Ive read some classic books but that was just for my english project.They were all right but not suited to my tastes!

I don't think mine says much..
but I'm open to almost anything.

i just throw in whichever books i have! so disorganized! and then i wonder why i can never find anything.

If my bookshelf could talk...it might say, "There's a lot of books here but their all mixed up".

I used to have my books very organised - and still do in a strange kind of way. In my 'Tallboy' IKEA bookcase, I have hard covers, poetry and hand-written stuff on two shelves. Smaller books on the top shelf (so I can double park them when I need to) and then in another bookcase, I have classics on the top shelf, biographies on the next on down, my personal journals on the third and photo albums on the bottom shelf. In the one by the door, it's my Mt TBR that is piled on top of the bookcase itself, then a menagerie of topics from paperback SK, JRR Tolkien, Yoga, gardening, classics and wartime books and then I have some Reader's Digest books too. *Then*, I'm into vampire romance in a serious way! And I don't mean that smutty, teenaged gooey-eyed stuff like 'Twilight', I mean good bloodthirsty vampire romance!
Over near the window, I have a complete bookcase dedicated to non-fiction. If I need anything about a subject, it's normally there... otherwise I search the net for it.
So, there you have it. My four bookcases crammed into this small office; and I gotta keep my collecting of these wonderful things under control otherwise I'll look like somebody in an itty-bitty maze who can't find their way out! One thing is for sure.... I'm never without a book to read!

My bookshelf probably shows that I spend a lot of time in the teen section of the library... and I had a huge obsession with Meg Cabot's books when I was slightly younger haha. :)

My husband organizes his books by subject and then by height. The shelves look great! Except for this little area at the end which is filled with books he hated, got for free, or has never read (and probably never will) - which he keeps because he likes to look at them...

I organize mine by categories: general fiction, sci fi/fantasy, YA, and then by series. Also on the shelves are instructional, language, yoga, spiritual, book club books (most of which I want to get rid of! but keep out of stubbornness), classics, and childhood favorites. And books that just don't belong in any category. The shelves get a lot messier the farther along you go...I think that's because I lost my steam while organizing and just stopped caring.
I always display the books I love first. They always look good :)

I guess mine says I've switched to ebooks and have donated all but a few paper books to the local library.

I organize my books by region. Fiction and non-fiction about China go together, for example. Within the region I go chronologically, so that Plato is shelved next to a book about Socrates' life and death.

I think my bookshelf probably says that I'm obsessive and pretentious. ;)

i try to order mine by author and title and series.
I have different sets of shelves for different kinds of books.overall i feel i am organized and I have an ecclectic collection of books--fiction,self help and humor and of course writing reference.

So my bookshelf is organized by author (alphabetical by last name) and then chronological order. It probably says that I have a wide range of interests and enjoy reading quite a lot!!! Thinking about getting an e-book reader though...any feedback?

Matthew, I got a Kindle for Christmas. I love it. Here are my pros and cons:

PROS
- Amazing for travel. It's so light! I recently spent a week hiking through the jungles of Colombia, and it was pretty great that I didn't have to lug a ton of books with me.
- Older books are free or close to it. I just finished Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde for free. I downloaded the complete works of Shakespeare for 99 cents! That's awesome.
- If I'm in a place with dim light I can bump the text size up, which is convenient for those of us who've tried to read in a bar while waiting on friends.

CONS
- For "Important" books, I still want to own a copy. I haven't gotten over the urge to just own books. So I don't always read off the Kindle.
- The inability to loan books out pretty much sucks; if I read something I know my wife would like, I have to loan her the Kindle. Barnes & Nobles' new Nook has a loaning feature, but a) I've heard it's not as cool as it sounds (for instance, you can only loan for a week, which, as we all know, isn't really how loaning books works), and b) of course it relies on the other person also having a Nook, which is pretty unlikely.
- Apple just announced their weird, overpriced iPad, and Google's rumored to have an e-reader in the works, and I'll bet ten bucks that by next Christmas my Kindle will look like an archaic artifact. You gotta be prepared for the fact that new and cooler toys will always be coming out.

Overall, I love the thing. I got used to reading off an electronic device immediately; I don't get distracted by the thought that I'm not holding a book. And it's fun to get envious looks on the subway. :) I'm a big fan.

I think my bookshelf probably says I need to get a life.

There's no real organization to my books. We have a lot of homemade bookshelves in our joint though, so some shelves are more appropriate for mass market paperbacks and others are more appropriate for the outrageously tall or cumbersome art books, etc. I do try to keep specific authors together (Wharton, H.D., O'Connor), just so I can find them at a drop of a pin. But otherwise I have this uncanny photographic memory of where most of my books are - which room, where on the shelf. You would think I just sit and stare at my shelves... I don't though. I swear. I wish I had that sort of brain power for other facets of my life but I really don't. Must be selective.

I sometimes just sit and stare at my shelves.

Brittany, yeah, totally. Half the fun is looking at all those books that I love; the other half is "Boy, these are really nicely organized."

No, Fiona, it just makes us all freaks together.

Alex and Brittany thanks for the feedback. I'm always a sucker for new gadgets but am really undecided here. I really enjoy the feeling of holding the paperback and feeling the texture of the pages.
However, it would make storing books a lot easier...lol. Thanks again for the feedback though it really did help.

I've found a lot of B&N employees actually know very little about books and authors. I always thought that was weird and a little sad.

My bookshelf is full of Fiction/Lit.; the classics as well as modern literature, and also poetry.