If you own over 500 physical books, how do you house and organize them?

[Anonymous]

I need to find a way to organize about 700-800 books. I am a pretty indecisive person and have looked at Libib, Storygraph, Library Things, book scanners but can't seem to commit... I think i want to alphabetize the titles within some of these categories and also have a big master list of all these titles.

How do you organize and categorize your books? And do you use the same app to also log your ebooks, audio books, and DVDs?

So far I am thinking these will be the categories:

-picture books (I still need to divide by topic or may non-fiction/fiction)
-YA fiction
-cookbooks
-foreign language
-adult non fiction: math and logic
-adult non fiction: music and arts
-adult non fiction: other hobbies
-adult non fiction: general
-older classic lit
-modern lit and fiction

[Anonymous]

You can look up the books' Dewey number and arrange them that way.

You might have to do some by size to fit your shelves.

[Anonymous]

I use a modified version of the Library of Congress system.

[Anonymous]

Color

[Anonymous]

I group them according to how much I love them, except for a few categories like cook books, picture books etc.

[Anonymous]

I organize by ethnicity of the author.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry, I have to ask - what is the point of keeping all these books? There are certain books like I like to reread. Then there are reference books (parenting, health, productivity, etc) that I liked and may refer back to. Then I have a couple of signed copies. All together, for me that's less than 50 books. Plus I always have a shelf full of books "to be read" - usually that's another 20-50. So I've got a max of 100 books.

I'm a voracious reader, and I fundamentally do not understand why on earth you'd need to keep 800 books in your home, unless it's essentially decorative, in which case, just arrange them in a way that's pleasing to the eye, what does it matter how they're sorted?

Isn't this just a weird form of hoarding? Get them out of your house! I guarantee you're not re-reading or referring to 800 books.

[Anonymous]

I recently moved and sold almost everything -- 100s of books -- at McKay's, and I'm so glad I did, even though I had a strong emotional attachment to my books. Before I moved and got rid of them, I would have told you that they were organized as follows:

By category, and then by author last name with a few exceptions. Categories are fiction, memoir, poetry, drama/acting technique (I'm an actor, I have a lot of scripts, books of plays, and acting tech books), reference (everything from dictionary to legal research and writing, to Martha Stewart's book about housekeeping here), writing books (I have an MFA in creative writing and I put craft books as well as books about getting work freelance writing, etc, here), CNF, cookbooks. I might be forgetting some.

Cookbooks aren't alphabetized by author, they are just kind of in the order in which I grab them, and they are on a shelf above my fridge. My theatre books are in an order that would only make sense to me and is hard to explain.

Literary fiction is mostly in a huge cabinet with glass doors in my living room. Like I said, cookbooks are above the fridge. Theater books are in a smaller cabinet that matches the big cabinet with fiction in it (it was a small media center, but I never used it for that). Everything else is in some ceiling-high built in bookshelves in a family room in the basement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry, I have to ask - what is the point of keeping all these books? There are certain books like I like to reread. Then there are reference books (parenting, health, productivity, etc) that I liked and may refer back to. Then I have a couple of signed copies. All together, for me that's less than 50 books. Plus I always have a shelf full of books "to be read" - usually that's another 20-50. So I've got a max of 100 books.

I'm a voracious reader, and I fundamentally do not understand why on earth you'd need to keep 800 books in your home, unless it's essentially decorative, in which case, just arrange them in a way that's pleasing to the eye, what does it matter how they're sorted?

Isn't this just a weird form of hoarding? Get them out of your house! I guarantee you're not re-reading or referring to 800 books.

Fundamentally, books are our friends. I need many. I suppose I have 2000, arranged in order by authors last name for fiction and Dewey for non fiction.
You’ve caused me to think about why I have so many. While I am a former librarian, and I suppose what goes along w that makes sense, I also remember losing myself in books when my parents divorced when I was ten.
They were the only thing I looked forward to. I wasn’t at a point when I could navigate social interaction.
I didn’t have to when I was in a book.
Old habits die hard i guess..
Books are our friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry, I have to ask - what is the point of keeping all these books? There are certain books like I like to reread. Then there are reference books (parenting, health, productivity, etc) that I liked and may refer back to. Then I have a couple of signed copies. All together, for me that's less than 50 books. Plus I always have a shelf full of books "to be read" - usually that's another 20-50. So I've got a max of 100 books.

I'm a voracious reader, and I fundamentally do not understand why on earth you'd need to keep 800 books in your home, unless it's essentially decorative, in which case, just arrange them in a way that's pleasing to the eye, what does it matter how they're sorted?

Isn't this just a weird form of hoarding? Get them out of your house! I guarantee you're not re-reading or referring to 800 books.

Yeah, it's an obsessive thing. My DH has not parted with a single book he has ever read. He considers them part of his "history." Our joke is that he has a book problem. One room of our home is devoted to his library, which he organizes loosely by topic. There are worse obsessions.

[Anonymous]

I'm an archivist and former circulation desk jockey in college. I put books where they are used. I have bookcases and book stands in every room. Cookbooks go in the kitchen, kids books are in the hallway outside of their rooms so I can read to them before bed, and other books just go into the library. Because the books are spread out everywhere, we also keep a spreadsheet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry, I have to ask - what is the point of keeping all these books? There are certain books like I like to reread. Then there are reference books (parenting, health, productivity, etc) that I liked and may refer back to. Then I have a couple of signed copies. All together, for me that's less than 50 books. Plus I always have a shelf full of books "to be read" - usually that's another 20-50. So I've got a max of 100 books.

I'm a voracious reader, and I fundamentally do not understand why on earth you'd need to keep 800 books in your home, unless it's essentially decorative, in which case, just arrange them in a way that's pleasing to the eye, what does it matter how they're sorted?

Isn't this just a weird form of hoarding? Get them out of your house! I guarantee you're not re-reading or referring to 800 books.

I mean our house has three tall bookshelves and 3 small bookshelves spread across three floors. I don’t think that’s an excessive amount so periodically we take a box of books to the library and make room for some more. It’s not hoarding if you have space for them.

[Anonymous]

Sort of by category and size — with all of the books that I have by a given author usually in the same place. Not all of my bookshelves are adjustable though, so coffee table / larger books are organized — not that I would call it that — by size.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry, I have to ask - what is the point of keeping all these books? There are certain books like I like to reread. Then there are reference books (parenting, health, productivity, etc) that I liked and may refer back to. Then I have a couple of signed copies. All together, for me that's less than 50 books. Plus I always have a shelf full of books "to be read" - usually that's another 20-50. So I've got a max of 100 books.

I'm a voracious reader, and I fundamentally do not understand why on earth you'd need to keep 800 books in your home, unless it's essentially decorative, in which case, just arrange them in a way that's pleasing to the eye, what does it matter how they're sorted?

Isn't this just a weird form of hoarding? Get them out of your house! I guarantee you're not re-reading or referring to 800 books.

I reread them — and actively use them as reference books — and I’m sure I have over 1,000. I also regularly cull books for donations. I have a fair number of books that are out of print, specialized, and definitely not available through the online libraries that I have access to. One person’s “hoarding” is my : Grateful to have a library of books by Black authors in a political environment hellbent on erasing our public presence.

PP, I get that you weren’t responding to me, but “guarantee”? Do you not know any academics or even voracious readers?

[Anonymous]

Category for the most part. We have a room of nonfiction history and military books that DH has read or is reading.
Several bookcases of fiction in a few languages.
Kids have their own shelves.
And we have a few shelves of YA that both DH and I read at this ages, waiting for the kids to grow up.
Within the categories books are arranged by language and size/aesthetics. I wish I had it in me to arrange by author. At least we keep authors together next to each other. We have at least 2000 volumes.