How are your books stored and arranged?

I have 5 matching waist high book shelves on one wall in my bedroom. Books are just where they fit, most of the shelves are 2 deep and they are overflowing. I'd love to have them arranged alphabetically but at the rate I buy and read I'd be constantly arranging them to make that work.

My books are not arranged in any kind of order. I have three bookshelves and the books that make it to the bookshelves are placed willy nilly. I also have a stack of books on a chair in my bedroom, a stack on the bedside table and a stack on a side table in the family room.

The books in the latter three places are the ones I bring home from the used book sales and are, in theory, my "to be read next books". They often get put to the bottom of my reading list since a hold from the library will come in and of course I need to read that first. The pile of library books is usually on the coffee table in the family room.

My dh has observed that my way of storing my books seems to resemble the chaos that is in my head. He's not wrong.

I've kept very few books. The hardbacks are on a shelf mixed with decorative objects. Some from the same author are together.

What few paperbacks I have are just on a shelf in no particular order. I only have them to pull out if we are traveling. We listen to audiobooks or read on a tablet.

Accumulating books again is one thing that I’m looking forward to. Moving so much with the military has kept our collection limited, although I’d say we still have close to 35-40 boxes of books, down from over 100 in the move from Boston to Virginia.

DH was a political science professor and also has a ton of unique military professional books that he’s used over the years. The kids each have about 2 boxes that they left with us. We have books everywhere—living room, offices, guest room, etc. We moved a month ago and all the books are still in boxes because dh is going to put headboard on the back of all the cases. We will have 5 Billy bookcases in the living room, 2 in my office, 2 in DH’s office, and another in my studio. I do have them set up with other items on the shelves as well—they aren’t all books.p

I tend to organize by genre. Kid’s books together, travel, cookbooks, fiction, series, etc. I don’t know exactly how DH puts his together, but they don’t get mixed in with the rest of ours—they stay separate on their own separate shelves. When I was packing for this move, I had a half a box of my books and a half box of his and mixed them. I told him that it made our relationship official—the books were commingling and he couldn’t divorce me or I’d take his books!

I have 3 bookcases, SO has one. Most of the books I keep are art/craft books. They are arranged mostly by craft, unless I don't have room or the book is too tall for the space where the rest of them are. Books about particular artists are kept together, no order. Other non-fiction books are grouped by topic.

My fiction books are thrown in a basket near the main bookcases. I don't usually keep them all and will donate them eventually. Some are keepers, but most are not. If they are keepers, I put them in the bookcase, but in no particular order other than maybe size.

I also have a small stack of books by my bedside that will eventually make their way to the bookcases.

I love books and would love a room full of books like the home libraries I often see on the internet. But, I know that I shouldn't keep that many. I do purge annually, but I somehow find more to buy.

I have never been one to have a lot of fiction or novels hanging around because I get all that type of reading from my library and send it back when I am finished.

My books that I have collected over the years are mostly reference or how to books. I have books on cooking, gardening, birds, math, construction, maps, writing, medical, auto body work, rebuilding engines, genealogy, tools, chemistry, psychology, farming and a bunch more. I collected these types of books before the Internet. A few years ago I tossed out two five foot high stacks because I can now get this type of information easily online.

In my office I have three shelves, one on top of the other, they run across two full walls. All of my books are on the shelves along with computer programs, files etc.

Unread --alphabetical by author last name--one bookcase
Read and unread classics-- randomly on a different bookcase
read books- however I shove them on there after I've read and decided to keep a book--on a 3rd bookcase

then each of my kids has a bookcase or two, my cookbooks are on another...

We have about 600 books according to my Goodreads library. They’re in bookcases all over the house. Primarily they are arranged alphabetically and about 80% of them are hardback. Paperbacks are all together on one bookshelf, also arranged alphabetically. I started cataloging everything in Goodreads when I found myself accidentally purchasing books I already owned! Alphabetical arrangement became necessary when Goodreads told me I owned a book, but I couldn’t find it on my shelves. I remove all my dust jackets, as it looks “cleaner” with so many books to just have a solid colour spine showing as opposed to a patterned or multicoloured dust jacket.

I have two huge bookcases stuffed with books I hardly pick up anymore, now that I read almost exclusively on my tablet. I may soon be purging a bunch of them and replacing them on the shelves with my scrapbook albums.

But right now they are arranged in one of three ways:

Theme: Fantasies are together; non fiction together; sets are in order.

The books I have read are arranged Alphabetically by author.

New books are in a pile in no order.

one of mine also - actually our whole family loves them.

I organize mine by genre and alphabetically. I have hundreds of books and they have overflowed our built-in bookcases to piles everywhere. I need to cull some soon. 😬

We have four Ikea Billy bookcases with the extender on top, and they are mounted to look like built ins. I have them all spread out along with picture frames, vases, tchotchkes, etc. I have all of my cookbooks on one shelf, a shelf of all of the paper books I’ve already read, a to be read paperback shelf, a hardcover shelf of my favorites, a hardcover to be read shelf, plus some are facing out to be more prominently displayed like my Pete Souza Obama photo book and a book about Real Housewives. I don’t really fuss too much about color order but I do like things to be in height order.

I’ve been using the library and my kindle much more in recent years so my actual physical book buying has calmed down a lot so my shelves aren’t stuffed full. In fact the bottom three shelves are completely empty because I have a toddler who loves to rearrange my shelves. There’s almost always random hot wheels and Bluey characters on those shelves.

In bookcases in the tv room, living room, upstairs landing, our bedroom glass-front hutch, and the most recent acquisitions are on a dresser I use as a nightstand. They are stored loosely by size and genre. I'm getting ready to do a purge of some of them.

I had hundreds and hundreds and they were in a dedicated "library" of bookshelves (the formal living room) arranged alphabetically by author, with a separate bookcase for books better arranged by subject.

I moved and donated boxes and boxes of books to the local charity-run used bookstore.

Most of the ones I kept are now in just a few bookshelves in the basement spare bedroom. It's still a few hundred books that are harder to find or out of print or collections I know I would want to have if I never had a Kindle, such as my Outlander series or Harry Potter, etc, but that's where most of my books live now (on my Kindle).