“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” —Marcus Tullius Cicero
I’m always interested to know what’s on someone’s bookshelf. Shelves can contain old favorites like The Wind in the Willows or The House at Pooh Corner, secret pleasures like Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes, a personal reading log of our last decade or so, or even aspirational titles we’re never actually going to read but would like to think we might. In other words, a bookshelf can reveal a lot about a person. In recent years, particularly as many of us moved our work onto Zoom and our ‘background’ became a part of our office aesthetic, the bookshelf has become not only an indication of interests and preferences, but also a statement of personal style, with carefully curated titles or color coordinated stacks populating decorating magazines and social media. So, how should one organize his or her books?
A color-coded bookshelf
The color-coding question is one surrounded by quite a bit of debate. It prompts the debate about whether books are design accessories or treasures that you’ve read and found worthy of keeping. Many of the more literary types look down on the aesthetic choice that seems to fly in the face of the old adage ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’ But others find the organizational approach easy to manage and visually appealing. There are even corners of Pinterest that could lead you to arranging books according to height or turning the pages outward for a more uniform (and very mysterious!) look.
Most libraries and bookstores sort titles first by genre or subject area and then alphabetically by the author’s last name. Many of us don’t organize our home bookshelves at all, but for the serious bibliophiles among us, there is home-library software, such as BookBuddy, which catalogues where each book is located on your shelves. Evernote can also be used to organize lists of titles.
This plan comes from a homeschooling mom with five kids. Her board books and early reading books are on the lower shelves.
If you have children or any young person with borrowing privileges who frequents your bookshelves, you should consider keeping literature for young readers on lower shelves that are easier to reach. It might also help you to opt for a color scheme in these areas as it’s easier for kids to put a book back in its place if its place is based on color. For the same reasons, it’s wise to place any collectible or valuable books, such as first editions or volumes passed down within a family, on higher shelves where they are less susceptible to prying fingers and other forms of damage. However, for most book collections, regular dusting is the extent of the care required.
Then there is the question of how to maintain an organized library if there is a consistent if not constant inflow of new titles purchased in bookstores and used bookshops. My husband, for instance, has an endless wish list of novels and nonfiction books and can very rarely leave a bookstore without a new book in hand. I’m also a member of two book clubs, so I’m buying new titles at least monthly. The Japanese have a word for the stockpiling of books that remain unread: tsundoku.
A Little Free Library
One suggestion is to join your local library so that you can move through books of interest without adding them to your permanent collection. You can always buy a copy if it turns out to be one you want on your shelves. You might also consider doing a quarterly or yearly audit of your bookshelves and donating any you no longer want to a local library, literacy organization, veteran or senior center, or even a Little Free Library if there is one near you. Books can also be re-sold, for instance on eBay.
Ultimately, the question is what system makes your books easiest for you to find? If you can remember which section of your rainbow bookshelf a particular title falls in, we say go ahead and color code. When in doubt, you can always visit a local bookstore to see how they do it but be careful of how many new books you might leave with!
Earlier ASE articles about reading and sourcing books:
