Never been my preference but I let my partner do it for our living room bookshelf (albeit somewhat hybrid bc the bottom shelf is one genre -- theory/philosophy).

I have a second bookshelf in my home office that's all by genre, which is my preference (so you can find shit!). The bookshelf she arranged definitely looks better than mine. I'm not sure I've known guys who color-code their books, just women.

Post a pic of your bookshelves if you like!

Alphabetical order for me. If a book is important enough then I know who wrote it. The only exception would be outsized books.

I generally go by genre and group by size more than alphabetically. Don't like books of wildly different heights next to each other.

My books are not really organized at all except that I try and keep works by the same author together; within those sections they are not in any order.

Since I'm never going to remember what color the spine of a book is, it's hardly a way to "organize" books, but I've got no room to talk. All our books are just randomly thrown onto the shelf. Crap. It seems like a very Instagram way to organize books.

Andrew wrote: Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:16 am Don't like books of wildly different heights next to each other.

Same, but I don't put a lot of effort into maintaining that kind of order.

I do have some books by the same publisher, whose covers are more uniformly designed, together: Black Sparrow Press, Soho Book Company...others.

Our books are a mess, but I keep the records in alphabetical and chronological order.