Posted byHow do you arrange your books in your home library? Haphazardly? Dewey Decimal System? Lately, I’ve been seeing more people on the interwebs arrange their books visually — not by type, but by color. In fact, there’s a whole Flickr group dedicated to The Rainbow of Books.
While there’s no denying that rainbow bookshelves are visually stunning, I can’t help but think it would be a major literary bummer if you couldn’t remember the spine color of a book when you wanted to find it.
Homies, what do you think? Is shelving your books by color the most gorgeous idea evar, or a book-nerd’s express train to irritation station?
Ours are done by color, but we also downsized in the book department over the last few years because we just don’t have the space to store them. We have definitely had the “Honey, what color is the ____ book?” conversation more than once since arranging them by color. I also have a lot of old paper backs that are yellowing white in color which is just not attractive. We didn’t notice how many of those were around until we starting sorting.
I used to arrange my books by subject, author, date… I even considered implementing the Dewey decimal system (kidding…sorta). Now, though, I have a toddler and moved into a new apartment, so I haven’t had the time to organize as obsessively as I used to. I love the look of this and think I’m going to try it!
Wait, people organize their books?
Thank god, I was scared we were the only family that didn’t organize books. And we had 10 overflowing bookcases while I was growing up. Just had to look at each one, which actually led me to reading a lot of books I may not have otherwise found/chosen.
I saw this amazing stop motion video of someone doing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFnuP9niRUg
I decided that it would be annoying to organize my bookshelf that way (when you want to find a book, you want to find a book!) but decided to organize our DVDs that way, since it’s rare we’re searching for an actual DVD, usually we just want something to watch.
It worked pretty well, except the vast majority of movies are white, black, red or blue. Almost no green, and no purple! Still, it looks quite nice and makes the living room look just that much more pulled together
I’ve seen this stir some heated debates. I’ve always loved the impact of color in this particular photo, but it would drive me into fits of displeasure trying to find what I need.
I file mine by category and then alphabetically by author.
But hey, to each their own and however best it works for you is really what matters!
My books are organized like this, and I love it! I’m a very colour-oriented person, so I often remember the jacket of a book before the title or author. My guy thinks it’s pretty funny that when he asks where books are, I can instantly describe the colour and font – “Infinite Jest? Towards the purple end of the blue section; lime green font. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; I put that in the red section even though it’s got some purple on it.”
Here’s ours! http://www.flickr.com/photos/29276523@N05/5583407185/
It’s absolutely beautiful but I don’t think I’d ever find anything again. And I also have a thing about keeping authors grouped together…
One option could be to cover your books in the colors you want, instead of only using the books the way they are. That way, you can keep your Harry Potter or Death Note collections together, and still have the colorful fun. Wrapping paper works really well for this.
I seriously love the look of it but I couldn’t do it either. I need to keep my reference stuff separate. And what if I wanted to browse my fairy tale books looking for which ones have what stories? That’s right, I consider those reference books. The joys of an English minor. Plus I have the same issues with splitting up a series, or the books by an author. I organize by my fave stuff and stuff I’m less likely to reread, then by author in order of publication. I could see doing one bookshelf like this as long as it was stuff like graphic novels for which our collection is smaller and many of them in a series are the same colour. (Except Buffy Season 8 and Fable)
I have OCD, and when I was a kid I used to do this to my bookshelves and the family VHS shelf. My parents thought I was insane. Anyway, that flicker pool makes me deeply happy and oddly calm. Thanks for sharing!
I don’t know if this would work for my books (I organize alphabetically by title, then number in the series)…but my fiance just haphazardly puts his books on the shelf. Maybe one day I’ll just rearrange his books by colour and see what he thinks…
Can I just say I love finding out that so many people organise their books at all?
My system is fairly simple: series and stand-alone fiction sorted by author (and then in series order), then non-ficton sorted by subject (including my ‘Fiction Reference’ section for stuff like DnD’s Draconomicon and The Folklore of Discworld), but people have still acted like I’m nuts for having them sorted at all.
My mum even accused both my boyfriend and I of having OCD because of it and was highly dissapointed to learn that he didn’t even notice when she swapped two of his Star Wars books around. Yes it annoyed granny when she did that, but that’s because she actually did have OCD, not just books with an intended chornological order!
I definitely have mine organized by colour… and sub-divided within each colour alphabetically by author. Then organized within THAT alphabetically by title.
The manfriend thinks I am am insane. He’s probably right.
I used to organize my books by subject, alphabetically by author, and by publishing year. But when we merged our books when we were married a couple years ago, my husband didn’t like that it resulted in shelves that were half short paperbacks and half tall hardbacks. Now we still organize by genre and keep series together, but we mix up the rest for a more balanced look.
I don’t really find organizing by color attractive, and I don’t think it would complement my rooms. I don’t want a rainbow in my livingroom or office. I certainly don’t want large blocks of color competing with my chosen accent or feature colors in the room.
My books used to be dewey decimal (I used to work in a library, it’s the only way I can sort non-fiction), until I got too many to fit on the shelves that way. Now they’re grouped by height and subject matter, still in a basic order of dewey decimal without being true to it…True Crime comes before Crafting comes before Shakespeare kinda thing.
I DO sort my clothes by colour, but I suppose that makes more sense. Books by dewey, CD’s Alpha then Release Date, DVDs Alpha, Clothes by Colour then Sleeve Length / overall length. 🙂
Oh my god I love this so hard! I alphebatize my books within their genres right now, but this is making me rethink my strategy.
As an artist, I love it! It’s so pretty!
As a librarian, I cringe.
In case ya’ll are wondering my books are all arranged by genre, alphabetical by author and in series order (because I hate alphabetizing titles when it puts them out of order – how am I supposed to know which one was first, second, or third?)
I shelve books at my local library, and the fact that they alphabetize titles rather than putting them in series order drives me absolutely batty.
My books are organized first by genre and then alphabetically (and I have a separate bookcase for textbooks/books relevant to my field of study – I’m in Classics, so my copies of Homer, Vergil, Greek plays, etc. are all in their own little area). I think that photo looks stunning, but for me it would probably be a huge pain in the ass to find anything!
Although I’m moving soon, so it might be a good opportunity to rethink my organizational scheme.
I am UNBELIEVABLY tempted to do this. I think the geek in me would do one of two things though to make it “organised” so I could find things:
1. Organise them all alphabetically (but this could be annoying when buying new books.
OR (and this is more tempting because I’m THAT much of a geek)
2. After organising them, make a catalogue alphabetically listing what colour section they are in. If I do that I send photo, I promise!
We didn’t organize our books, lol. I never did growing up and they were only tentatively organized for me and the Mister as adults, so we’re “organizing” by color. We only have three half bookshelves full though, so it’s not like walls and walls of color-coded books.
Ah, I can’t stand this – one, because it would break up series and genres; two, because to me it flirts with the idea of books as mere decor, which I loathe. It makes me very sad when I see books in places that don’t get read, like hotel lobbies. I can tell they are lonely and they need to be held. Yeah, I said it. I know I can’t be the only one here who feels this way!
That said, if it wasn’t made of books I would think it was awesome 🙂 I’m just a little weird about books being valued only for their covers – although I’m clear that that isn’t the intent here.
I organize my books roughly by genres, then by height (for multiple books by the same author, then it’s by height within author). And series are in order, regardless of height. Discworld, LOTR, and fairy tales lit is all in one area, then the genres get a little blurry after that. I do have separate bookshelves for paperbacks. I’d like to do a full reorganization, but it’s a bit tricky since my partner and I haven’t yet fully merged our books. Maybe I’ll get around to it one of these days. Honestly, I think merging finances was easier than merging books would be 🙂
LOVE IT!! Unfortunately my husbands collection of Sci-fi and fantasy novels don’t have such colorful spines 🙂
Mine are by color, and I love it. I generally don’t have a hard time remembering where certain books are, but if I happen to forget, it doesn’t take me long to scan through them.
My biggest annoyance with the scheme is that, because my shelves are completely full and I have no wiggle room, when I get a new book, I have to move ALL the other books to fit the new book in the right color space. I usually keep any new books I buy in the cabinet under my bookshelves until I have about 5 or 10, then just spend a couple of hours getting things rearranged.
I had a friend who threatened to do this once and I told her that I would come over in the middle of the night and re-organize them properly. I’m pretty sure this would actually drive me insane, but then, I’m pretty sure my organizational system would drive other people insane so…eh.
But seriously, how do you *find* things?!
We never organize our books anyhow – we just stack them haphazardly on the shelf however they’ll fit. I’m currently in the process of arranging them by color so they’ll at least be pretty! Our DVD shelf is already arranged this way, and I love it!