My brain loves organization. I am the type of person who has to have all of the paper bills in her wallet facing the same way, with the smallest denomination in the front and the largest in the back. Therefore, I take the organization of my bookshelves seriously. Very seriously.
Even as a child, I had a system, albeit a simple one: descending size order! Tallest books on the left, shortest books on the right. I suppose I was aiming for some kind of aesthetic back then, although I wasn’t aware of it. By the time I reached high school, though, I’d begun arranging my books alphabetically by the author’s last name, and I’ve pretty much stuck with this system ever since.
I say “pretty much” because there are always a few exceptions. Jane Austen’s novels and any Austen-related books, like the collection of her letters, have a shelf all to themselves. The same goes for the Harry Potter books—no one shares a shelf with them, either. I also have a shelf dedicated to the books that I’ve had since childhood. The rest of my books, which consist mostly of YA and adult fiction, follow the alphabetical-order-by-author system.
Recently, though, two things got me thinking about how I organize my shelves. I was looking through the blog’s review archive, which is also arranged alphabetically by author last name, and something caught my eye. Cassandra Clare’s City of Lost Souls, from The Mortal Instruments series, is listed before Clockwork Angel, the first book in The Infernal Devices series. Now, if I were sorting alphabetically by title, that would be the correct order. But would it be better to sort by the name of the series, in which case The Infernal Devices should appear before The Mortal Instruments? To make this scenario even more interesting, TID is a prequel to TMI. Should some kind of chronological reading order be considered here? Perhaps the two most vital questions I should ask myself are: 1) Aren’t there more constructive uses of my time than pondering things like this, and 2) Am I ever going to get around to rereading the first four TMI books so that I can review them? (The answer to both questions is yes.)
The other thing that gave me pause for thought about the arrangement of the books on my shelves was a simple one: looking at the shelves themselves. I decided to do one of my periodic clean-outs and gather the books that I wasn’t going to read again (and in a few cases, bought ages ago but was never going to read a first time) for donation to the library. I figured that I might as well rearrange the shelves while I was at it, grouping all of my YA books together; they had previously been mixed in with the adult titles. With the organization questions raised by the blog’s review archive fresh in my mind, I took a closer look at the order on my shelves. They were in ABC order by author, but in the instances where I owned multiple books by the same author, it appeared that I was going for a chronological-by-publication-date scheme. For example, the one book that I own from Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series sat in front of the books from her Bloodlines spin-off series. Jane Austen’s novels followed one after the other in order of publication date, too. I have no idea when I decided to use publication date as a secondary sorting key, but since it was consistent across the shelves, I’m sticking with it. I haven’t yet decided which approach is best for the blog’s review archive, so that’s staying as is for the time being as well.
I majored in computer science in college, and the study of sorting algorithms was an integral part of the coursework. Perhaps that, along with my lifelong obsession with organization, has led me to write this ridiculously long ramble on how much time I spend thinking about my bookshelves. I probably spend an equal amount of time staring at them, which then causes me to daydream about my favorite characters, scenes, and quotes, further keeping me from carrying out some far more important task.
Do you have a special organization system for your bookshelves? I’d love to hear about it!
