The Next Best Book Club discussion

Hmm...I've got two 5-shelf bookshelves, most of the shelves double-stacked, with other ones piled haphazardly wherever there's room. I have two three-shelf bookshelves as well, same thing. Then there are other books just piled everywhere.

I have lots of historical fiction - mostly Elizabethan stuff, lots of 'modern literature', lots of chicklit - I think I have a whole shelf of Nora Roberts/JD Robb books.

Also lots of Holocaust memoirs and slavery memoirs, and books about the Amish, also lots of books about parenting and child development and teaching.

That I need to get new shelf space!

My bookshelves say a lot about me. They're messy and very unorganized. :) I have a lot of classics, most I have read, and quite a few that I love to reread. I also have a lot of YA books like Harry Potter, Inkheart,etc.(although my collection keeps getting smaller because I do not care for most of the YA books I read now) I don't have any romance novels because I can't stand them (except for Pride and Prejudice). And I also don't have any chick-lit. I have a lot of children's books from when I was young, all of my favorites are together. I've got an entire shelf dedicated to Bernard Shaw, and I'm clearing one off for Kurt Vonnegut.I've got books stacked everywhere in my room and I've always got at least three on my nightstand.I try to order my shelves alphabetically, but it never stays organized for long. None of my shelves are for display purposes, because no one goes into my room except for me. I like it that way, because, in a way, it seems like they are mine alone, it's almost like a private world that no one else can enter but me.

Ah, homemade bookshelves. Someday you'll have real bookshelves, Ashley, and you'll look at them and sortof miss the improvised ones.

hrmmm... my book shelves are arranged by COLOR :) Is that too weird? LOL! That and by size. Seeing as they are all on top of one shelf, one tier definitely has to be the same size so the next stack won't topple over. I always thought it was nice to look at how the books started with white then slowly start to change to the various colors getting darker and darker until they end up black... With that said, it is super hard to find books unless you remember the color of the cover. My books range from fantasy (mostly), YA, classics and history. All oversized books are together on a different shelf!

Ah ha, M, I did it by color once too. It was pretty fun, but I totally couldn't handle the fact that I own two books by Jose Saramago and they were in totally different places. I'm too uptight.

M, my bookshelf is color-coded too. I love it :)

The look on my wife's face when she came home and realized I'd spent the last two hours color-coding books..."Why can't you just surf porn while I'm not here like a normal guy?" She loves books as much as I do, but obsessively rearranging bookshelves is another thing. :)

*sniggers!* Alex,Brittany,I'm very OCD about my books and I'm prowling around at 3 in the morning changing things that bug me! I've got 7 different sized bookcases in my bedroom so I need to be organised!

I do it by subject on my 2 big IKEA 6 shelf beasts-4 horror,2 asian,2 war,1 mythology and Ancient Egypt,3 general fiction. The books are not alphabetical(yet, but I am considering it).The 5 shelf one has a row for biographies,1 for true crime and 3 for all my Tudor f and nf!The 3 bookshelves with 3 shelves each have the kids/YA section,travel,sport(especially my cricket biographies!)and Wii/playstation games.The 7th one is for all those huge books that you can't find room for anywhere else.

The thought of now going back to do alphabetical or colour coding makes me feel sick!

I now do mine by geographic region and, within that, chronologically. What's important to me is that Plato's "Last Days of Socrates" is next to the history book "Why Socrates Died."

We have this book tower thing - sortof a tall invisible bookshelf - for the oversized books. It's cool-looking.

This reminds me of High Fidelity. (I've never read the book, so this scene may be in it, but I love the movie so that's the reference here.) My brother has actually been considering trying this. I told him if he did he would be my all-time hero, and not just a big brother.

Dick: I guess it looks like you're reorganizing your records. What is this though... Chronological?
Rob: No.
Dick: Not alphabetical...
Rob: Nope...
Dick: What?
Rob: Autobiographical.
Dick: No f--ing way.

Tell him not to do it. I did it after seeing that movie; it was a disaster. Your brother probably has like 200 CDs; people only consider this sort of thing if they have tons of music. It's cute in a movie, but in real life he won't be sure where to put about half of those and he'll never find any of them.

Sign that I'm old: I now obsess over organizing books instead of CDs.

I love that you actually tried to do it. You get hero-points for trying.

I will warn him. I told him I didn't think it would work for him anyway though, because he's also slightly OCD, and if he sees his books haphazard-appearing (like a large hardcover next to a mass paperback), he'd wind up in an institution. But I would still consider him heroic from my comfy place on the outside of the institution. I think talking about taking on a project of that magnitude is much more fun than actually doing it. Like talking about how much fun it would be to tell your boss off or something. Chances are it wouldn't be nearly as neat doing it in reality.

Yes, sorting books can be JUST LIKE interrelational skills.

Wait, is he gonna do his books chronologically instead of CDs? Also an interesting and terrible idea.

I agree, planning is way more fun than execution.

My shelves are organised alphabetically (authors last name) with the non-fiction on the bottom shelf, i dont read much non - fiction. I have occasionally tried to organise it other ways but go back to this, i find it easier to quickly find books that way.

haha! I'm glad I'm not the only one who's tried the color coding method! :)

@Bhumi, we think alike! I do love LOVE it!

@Alex, your wife's comment is too funny!

My bookshelves say absolutely nothing about me, they say more about what books friends and family want me to read. Now go into my ebook reader (right now it's a nook) and you'll get a true sense of what I like.

My bookshelves say "You're gonna die before you get all of these books read." (I tend to donate most of my read books to the library and only have mostly TBR books.)

Mine are only sort of sorted by size and subject. Plus the piles of books on the floor that didn't fit in the shelves. (I do have a complete set of Hard Case Crime books all together in release order that I'm not going to be donating.)

My bookshelves say I'm an unorganized cluttered mess of a person ;)

Well I've been collecting books over 30 years so I've gone through different periods where I liked different genres. So I'm not sure you could get a sense of who I am through my shelves but maybe see glimpses of me in the books I write.

Fiona wrote: "Can you judge a person by their books and their bookshelf display?

What do you think your books say about you - to someone who doesn..."

My bookshelves probably tell people that I'm confused. I have a wide range of books ranging from history to self-help to easy reads to religion related to autobiographys to quick/easy reads to joke books. My friend says I have weird reading habits...it's what I learn from and grow from are my books!! :-)

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 generally organize by genre, than series or authors (James Patterson together, Stephen King together, Harry Potter together, etc), than by size (big to small...sometimes I shove PBs ontop of big).

Carol Wrote: "aw Kim Join the rest of us addicts. I thought about going to library, changed my mind. I went on line to Amazon,To many to buy. I need to buy groceries first."


I am SOOOO happy that I am not alone!! Thankfully we have a book bin at work (take some/leave some)-well lately I've been doing a lot more taking than leaving. :-D

My bookshelves say that I'm a collector! I have so many books that many have to be stored in my shed, and every room has several bookshelves. I tend to organise by author within genre, but they don't seem to stay that way! I have one large bookshelf that is all my Andre Norton collection, and a smaller one that has my Anne McCaffrey collection. Those are the only two who have their own bookshelves, the rest are in clumps by author, but together on shelves. I have very little non-fiction, so I guess they also say I'm an escapist, one who loves sci-fi, fantasy, humorous romance, mystery, and paranormal. I also have many YA and children's books, which I have read, because most of my working life has been in education, both preschool and elementary. My mom is always telling me I need to get rid of some, but I can't let them go!

I saw this article about book displays and thought back to this thread - particularly the bit about shelving books by color.

Oooh I liked the black and white set-up

I call bullshit on that article! That beautiful color-coded shelf...it just doesn't work like that in real life. It's too neat and orderly. I accuse her of buying books because she knows she needs more orange covers.

...either that or she's just way better at it than I am. *cough*

The black and white thing was pretty cool, but I also raise a dubious eyebrow at any system that involves covering the name of the book. What if you want to, y'know, find one of them?

Spines turned in = ridiculous.

Cool article though El, I'm gonna forward it to the wife.

I agree alex... the color coding on that seemed too... convenient... beautiful i must say, but unbelievable!

She's an interior designer, you know they buy books by the foot for purely aesthetic purposes, right? It's not meant to be real (which is, yeah, dumb). But pretty.

Also, Santa Claus doesn't exist.

I'm not sure how I feel about the naked baby doll in the second photo in that article. No, wait, I do know how I feel about it. It's random and a little weird. Interior designers are a strange breed. Do they all put naked baby dolls in their designs?

Alex, you should have put a SPOILER ALERT before that. Now I know how the story ends. This is my angry face. That you can't see. Because this is a computer screen. But it's there, trust me!

I didn't even notice the naked baby doll. Yeah, that's a bit self-consciously arty.

Obi-Wan dies.

I like different genres. I used to keep all my books until I joined paperbackswap and then I stared getting rid of the ones that I had read. But I still have a huge TBR pile. Every since I have joined Good Reads and PBS I have started reading new authors which have made my TBR to really grow. I try to keep all of my authors together but since I'm running out of space I am having a harder time doing that.

Anyone entering my room would think either 'book-fanatic' or 'this girl has no social life!' and they would be correct on both...I have 8 bookcases of varying sizes in the room and about 3000 books I think.I'm fanatical about keeping them organised first by 'type' ie one of my big 6 shelf bookcases is purely for horror,PNR/UF (and each shelf is deep enough to take two rows of paperbacks) and then by author.

3000...wow.

Now I'm fighting the urge to go count my books.

Hey! I'm definitely a fan of fantasy and children's books. My bookshelf contains mainly children's authors like Henrik Drescher, Raymond Briggs, Nancy Carlson, and Dr. Seuss. Also, my bookshelf has books that have won various awards like the Caldecott Medal award and the Coretta Scott King Award and since I love fairy tales and folktales, my bookshelf contains a section of fairy tales and folktales. My bookshelf also has various books from different countries such as Russia, France, and China.

I have a system, but it's not obvious all the time :). My paperbacks are in my bedroom, alphabetized by author, two deep on all shelves and overflowing D: my hardbacks are in the living room with my children's books and they're pretty much the same, but they overflow into my non-fiction case, which is one of the half sized ones. My husband has the other half-sized one which is all business related texts, yucky XP . My last case is half artbooks and half graphic novels. it's in the officeish corner of our living room. The non-fiction and the artbooks are alpha by title.

I love alphabetizing because then when I get new books everything shifts and those in the back may get their chance at the front and maybe I'll pick up something I forgot I owned in the interrim.

I've considering the color thing, because I'm a fan of feng shui and color-coding by section of the bagua would be kinda awesome... but I worry about the finding.

The interior designer approach raises my hackles... it feels like such a poser move. It seems wrong to own books when you have no intention of reading them.

Madeline wrote: "it feels like such a poser move. It seems wrong to own books when you have no intention of reading them. "

Right, exactly. If you have 'em there to look like you own books, you suck; if you have 'em there to read, you need to see their titles.

Do the color-coding thing. You will hate it after two weeks, but it'll be out of your system.

I put all this thought into which graphic novels to display in the living room (on the Big Book shelf). I sense Neil Gaiman from you.

Love the name Madeline.

Hmm... I think anyone perusing my book shelf would see me as a most eclectic individual. My reading choices can be anything from classics to horror to mystery to philosophy to science to religion. I rarely engage in romance and biography reads though but you can still locate a couple on my shelf in addition to short stories and poetry.

Mine says, "This girl needs more storage!" LOL

And also, what are you doing replying to a post when you have finals!?! (Those are the textbooks giving me the evil eye right now...)

Otherwise, I guess it says hello fantasy book reader, oh you like the classics too, I am sure we can find one or two of those. Comedy, maybe...

With more space it would be overflowing, several moves have willowed it down to the ones I know I'll read again.

Alex wrote: "Do the color-coding thing. You will hate it after two weeks, but it'll be out of your system.

I put all this thought into which graphic novels to display in the living room (on the Big Book shelf). I sense Neil Gaiman from you."

Maybe I will if I have some time to kill this summer. Might be worth it just to see it and take a pic. :D

I do have some Gaiman, but I have more Marvel. I'm an X-men, Runaways and Exiles fan. I also have Elfquest (my middle school obsession), and a couple Alan Moore's (V and Watchmen), Joss Whedon's (Fray and the new Buffy), and Fables, I looooove the cover artist, James Jean specifically but I'm not in love(or even in like really) with the stories or interior art on those. I would be more picky on what was living room vs. bedroom fare, but I need another bookcase first!

Thanks, I love Madeline too, which doesn't sound egoist at all :P . It's become so popular in the last ten years or so! I don't know anyone my generation with my name.

My bookshelf would say that I read by my mood. I have fiction, non fiction , romance, science fiction, self help, Young adult, cookbooks and scrapbook books.

My bookshelves ask questions. Questions like, "Why do you have over 75 cookbooks, mostly about baking, when you only cook for diabetics?" And "Does anybody really need the complete works of Dick Francis?" And "Where do you plan to put all those books that are stacked in random piles around the house because there's no shelf-space left?" As you can see, my bookshelves are annoying and hyper-critical.

Ha, Suzanne!

Madeline, I love Runaways. Moore is represented by League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - not his deepest work, but the most fun to read imo. I've been reading X-Men since 5th grade and will probably never quit, although they take annoyingly long to put out trades; I'm like a year behind.

I get more into Fables as it goes.

And I have We3 out there, which is one of the best things I've ever read.

Alex, I'm putting We3 on my TBR list now! It looks fantastic. Cyborg pets! The best! So happy to have a new comic recommendation, I used to have a friend who worked at a comic book store and she was the best source until she moved :( .

I haven't given up on fables, I just buy them slowly. I think I'll end up buying the cover art book though and get my James Jean crack all in one serving.

X-men is easiest in spurts, they do take a long time and it's easier for me to take breaks and come back around once more are out. I plan to read LofEG, it's on my list. I love the concept and have been told it's great before, just so many things to read. Blah.

My bookshelf cries scatter-brained ... er, eclectic.

Madeline, I hope you like it. I don't really keep up with comics any more, so I probably can't replace your friend, but at least I can get you into We3. :)

I do love League. Only the first two volumes though; after that Alan Moore enters his "Holy crap I'm so insane" phase and he's basically unreadable.

haha he does seem to have lost it. I'll keep that in mind and maybe only borrow later volumes.

I'ts probably better that you can't! I spent waaay too much money when she worked there.

Yes, you can judge a person by their bookcases. You can tell alot about a person by what books are on their shelves. Just like you can with anything else, music, movies, clothes, exc.

I think the first thing my books would say to a complete stranger about me is that I have a total obsession with books lol. That I'll probably die before I've read them all! My taste in books is wide and varied, very eclectic. I have children's, young adult, true crime, mystery, romance, history, fiction and non-fiction, political, health and nutrition, atlas, travel, reference, classic, biography, historical fiction, and much more.