How to Organise Bookshelves

[Kragholm Free States]

Sometimes I put the books on the shelf. They don't often stay there very long. I tend to have quite a few in varying states of half-read at any one time, so organising them seems a little futile.

[Forsher]

Get a few interested bookshelves together to form a discussion group. Out of this group try to put together an Organising Committee. Develop an issues based programme on the main problems faced by bookshelves - no more heavy dictionaries and encyclopaedias, a ban on having to have Dan Brown novels, that kind of thing. Recruit more members and then take the bookshelf union's demands to employers.

Surely they will splinter immediately into different groups... wood vs particle board vs other materials, wall mounted vs free standing, tall vs small etc.

Sometimes I put the books on the shelf. They don't often stay there very long. I tend to have quite a few in varying states of half-read at any one time, so organising them seems a little futile.

I hear that.

Although, quite a few books I like to read in short bursts and they're imo designed that way. I've probably read all of them at this point in total but revisiting them is always fun, I feel.

[Pax Nerdvana]

My book shelves are sort of disorganized. I have some grouped by genre and size, others are just stacked randomly on the shelves, and others are stacked in various corners of my room. Based on the alignment chart, I'm probably chaotic evil. I even have some shelves that are deep enough to have multiple layers of books on them. One day, I'd love to organize them by genre and author, but that may just be a pipe dream.

[Hansdeltania]

I have a five-platform wooden bookshelf. Heavy books like dictionaries and textbooks go on the bottom shelf, while lighter shit like binders and notebooks go in the one above. The remaining three are for displays like my model aircraft collection. At the very top are my swimming trophies.

[Forsher]

I have a five-platform wooden bookshelf. Heavy books like dictionaries and textbooks go on the bottom shelf, while lighter shit like binders and notebooks go in the one above. The remaining three are for displays like my model aircraft collection. At the very top are my swimming trophies.

Ah, yes, the question of load distribution.

I think it's fair to say I ignore it completely. Well, not that completely but for the most part. Obviously one doesn't want to put too much weight on a shelf but beyond that? Why bother? Risk of tipping? Well, that depends on the shelf, I think. Two of the shelves I use are very much designed for paperbacks and are, themselves, pretty solid pieces of furniture. On the other hand, I also use two particle board shelves... but the reason the textbooks are lower down is because I've got my course notes in magazine boxes above them. It's basically autobiographical/chaotic neutral.

[Krasny-Volny]

/obligatory other option.

I have books, but no bookshelf. The books go in drawers and a cardboard box that sits on top of my dresser.

[Region of Dwipantara]

Have anyone considered Bogosort? The method successively generates permutations of its input until it finds one that is sorted, a.k.a. "throw every book on the floor, put it back randomly and see if the result looked nice". That might work.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

There is always accession order, where you keep your books in the order that you got them. To the untrained eye it might appear that they aren't organised.

[Purpelia]

In other words they waste time. The limited time they have on earth they spend pointlessly and without purpose achieving nothing! That's just sad. Better to spend that time doing productive things like posting stupid crap on the internet while drinking. Now there is a way to spend your life and money that I can get behind.

Some people want to just read a book, who cares.

Whiskey. Or in todays case brandy. Tomorrow I'll check with rum, see what he has to say.

[Esternial]

Heresy!
Ebooks...eww

I used to hate them too, but hey they're nice. Feels good to have hundreds of books at your fingertips - also I can read them online at work and my coworkers don't suspect a thing because the screen full of text looks like I'm working.

Though I do rather prefer a good book in my hands, I've nothing against ebooks anymore. An ebook is better than no book.

But how else can I show off my ample bookshelves and voluminous arsenal of literature?

[Pax Nerdvana]

I used to hate them too, but hey they're nice. Feels good to have hundreds of books at your fingertips - also I can read them online at work and my coworkers don't suspect a thing because the screen full of text looks like I'm working.

Though I do rather prefer a good book in my hands, I've nothing against ebooks anymore. An ebook is better than no book.

But how else can I show off my ample bookshelves and voluminous arsenal of literature?

Unfortunately, you can't. I prefer hard copies myself.

[Thepeopl]

There is always accession order, where you keep your books in the order that you got them. To the untrained eye it might appear that they aren't organised.

Like the "blue period" of Picasso...

It would be great fun to see the timeline growth. And you would be able to see when Charles Stross finally wrote a new book
Erm, maybe I shouldn't. You would immediately see my tendency to read later parts in series first and afterwards my frantic scramble to find previous parts.

[Greed and Death]

I did not know I was chaotic evil.

I will have to up my evil now on forum posts.

[Snakeden]

I try to keep ones of a similar type or subject together, but sometimes their different sizes and the space available on shelves makes that difficult. And I don't have the space a library has got, so I can't have a foot of clearance over the top of any books "just in case". So now and then things just have to be where they fit, and that's okay. I'm the only one who reads them, and I've only got to impress myself--which is generally accomplished by the fact I own things I like. So I'm content.

[United Dependencies]

For me personally, it's a mixture of the size of the book itself and the topic. I would prefer to arrange just by topic, but I don't have shelves that are tall enough to do that.

[Merni]

Just dump all the books in, horizontally, vertically, whatever, and worry about it when you want a book out. If something looks precarious, arrange it in order of size.