Rainbow vs. Sorted by…
Hello!
This is now our 3rd Bookending Spring’s post, meaning I have accomplished the “minimum goal” for our little event, hurray! ✨
Today’s topic is the one by Michelle’s (Hosting from April 18th to 21st) for April 20th — the prompt post, her post ;
Rainbow vs. Sorted by…
pros and cons of sorting your books by colour or series/authors/publishers
*aherm*, first of all.. I have a secret to tell you.
I’m the goblin of the book blogging world – I actually don’t sort my books by any particular way. The only “order” my shelves have is that my very top one is my gaming shelf, followed by two “have read” shelf, and the last one is the “physical tbr”. And that’s it…
My way to place them basically differ from time to time, mostly i’d just throw them however to have them all fit in thoses two shelves; I really do need a bigger bookcase, however im not sure it’d fit in my room 😂 I started with them all positionned vertically, until I saw that some do put them like half vertically & have a second half stacked horizontally to fill more spaces.. and so that’s what I did aswell!
• Rainbow shelves
This one I quite like ! It’s very pleasing to see, though not so sure about actually finding a desired book.., but my problem with that is there’s no way I own one book of every color .. so my rainbow wouldn’t even look like anything. Not to say that’s it should take quite a while to organize the very first time..
• By serie / author
This one makes more sense to me, I tend to place series together in my “mess” anyway – but again, I very rarely have more than a few books by the same author… If you do have more than, say, a handful from many authors ithink this is how it’d most likely order them.
• By sizing
This one is also very elegant looking to me ! However.. this means the need to have atleast a few of the same height – or else this doesn’t quite work .. I guess this would also include going from highest to smallest (or you know, opposite way), which is how I used to order them before just shoving them however fitting.
Mostly, I’m having problems with all of thoses.. A- Not having series together (for the very few series I do have) and B- Mixing the read and non-read books… don’t ask me why exactly it bothers me so much, as you’d guess one would know if they have read something or not, eh? but it just drive me NUTS. I need them separate, though I do have my list onto Goodreads aswell, I just need to see the distinction.
Now tell me; How do you sort your books?
Am I the only one not having a defined order?
Is there one way you absolutely prefer over the others (wether you do it or not)?
I have absolutely no order at all! My books are currently stacked in often toppling over piles around my room which probably sounds awful to anyone who meticulously orders there books!I’ll get round to it at sometime I’m sure…😂
Hahahah hopefully😅 someday.. all that matters is you knowing where your books are
Omg I’m totally the same way. I have 180ish books that I need to fit on one bookshelf. I have zero room to make my bookshelf look all nice and pretty. I just make sure my series are together and shove them all on, half vertically, and half stacked horizontally to save room. Except I don’t separate my read and unread books. I HATE doing that, cuz what the hell do I do with a book once I’ve read it??? I’d have to completely reorganize my shelf every time I read a book, and I do NOT have time for that. But yeah, I love how rainbow shelves look, but most of what I read is fantasy, and they all have really dark or black covers, so my rainbow would just be a couple bright books and then a bunch of black, which would just kind of look weird?? And also, the effort that would take is just not worth it. And I low key hate organizing by size?? Like, it just looks super unsymmetrical to me, and I just find that it looks weird? That’s probably why I don’t have any particular organization method: I tend to hate all of them?? 😂😂😂 Like, they look pretty when other people do them, but for some reason my books just make organization look ugly???
Ahaha a dark rainbow 😂 mmh.. yeah, Ideally the “read” shelves has some space spaces to fit more books, eh ..
Yep! I totally agree with that.. with everything ahah super pretty when NOT on you or about yours.. then you cannot stand it. because logic.
Can we see pictures of your shelves?
As for me, I’m currently living in my Mom’s house so I only have one bookcase in my room so I’m limited as to how many books I can have here. My system is alphabetical by author with fiction and non-fiction mixed in together, as well as read and TBR.
But now I’m liking your system of separating the reads from the TBRs. I tend to reorganize my room fairly often so the next time I do that I might try your system. Just to see how I like it.
I haven’t changed it .. so you can find one in my “bookshelf tag” post if you want; https://booksanddachshunds.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/the-bookshelf-tag/
Yep same .. Ohh you’ll let me know what you think, I just think it’s way more easier when getting to find what you wanna read next, as you have a “section” to look onto.
I didn’t quite think of alphabetical.. though it still sounds like too much effort XD
Oh thanks for the link! Your shelves look really nice, actually!
Ah thank you!
I mostly sort my books by title, and if they belong to a series I’ll use the series title – the exception are 2-3 books that are for some reason much smaller than the rest, and those go on the end so they don’t get lost; the rest are mostly around the same size, and I actually like the way the height changes a bit as you go across the shelf – maybe because my local library doesn’t sort by size (alphabetical by author/Dewey decimal) so the look is familiar to me 🤔
that would be a possibility! I also tend to put the smallest on the ends too xD I like both the aesthetic of “height changes slowly” and “all the same height”
My main thing is read vs. not read my mind cannot let them be mixed on a shelf! Otherwise I’m pretty whatever though I do have shelves for favorites and classics. This is reminding me that I really need to dust them soon 🙂
im picky like that too!! I need that separate section to see what I wanna pick as my next book (i’d pick them up, look at the synopsis.. pass to the other ..Xd)
Though I do not read classics, one of my two shelves I used to put like, my “favorites” on and the others on the other one xD
I only separate it by language lol. Rainbow looks aesthetic af but me owning all the colors are impossible
That’s actually fair, I haven’t thought of that one at all xD Mind you I don’t own very much english yet so erhm.. ahaha
I totally sort my books by height, the biggest sin is having a mishmash ahahaa. I also have paperbacks on a separate shelf from my hardcovers, because I am a weirdo.
Well imean, if you have enough from both .. that’s fair enough.
Thank you so much for doing my prompt. I’m having exactly the same issues as you have and it’s infuriating. I can’t wait until the day I have a bigger bookcase and I can finally sort my books the way I want. Hopefully I’ll have enough coloured books to maybe a rainbow? To at least see what it looks like, because honestly, I don’t think I could have a rainbow bookcase for the rest of my life :’)
Yeh xD i can see myself getting mad at it after a point too hahah
LETS BUY MORE COLORFUL BOOKS!! 😉
All the series are together, but other than that, there’s no organisation whatsoever. It bugs me sometimes, but is such a big task to rearrange that I can’t be bothered with it!
I am totally with you on that..
I sort according to series and author. But you have no idea how tempting it is to sort my books according to the rainbow! 🌈 Thanks Kristina!
That’s probably the most sense one out of thoses XD If I didn’t threw everything just anywhere i’d follow that one. I bet how tempting it should be when you know you have lot of colors !!
Oooooo I also don’t have a defined order either to my books. They’re kinda just organised in an aesthetically pleasing way to me but I split my books into read and unread so I can easily see which ones I have to read still…then usually I’ll ignore those ones xD
Hahahah yep! Same. 😂