#Microblog Mondays: Organizing My Library

This summer, I did a little book re-organizing. Never you mind that we just moved here in December, and so the shelves have only really been organized less than a year, because one of my favorite things to do is to rearrange books. I know it's only a small part of being a librarian, but it makes me think I would love to be a librarian in another life (all those books! All the opportunities to talk about the books and direct people towards books and display the books! Yeah, I could dig being a small town librarian, at least the kind that lives in my fantasy of what that would look like). 

I moved my to-read shelves from one of the big bookshelves on my office wall to the 2-shelf bookcase that matches my desk. 

They were here, the 3rd shelf and 4th shelf down from the top, in easy reaching distance from the chaise lounge

And now they are here, in arms reach from my desk, but way more visible. 

I read a McSweeney's Internet Tendency piece that describes how you shelve your books says something about you, and by color was a category, although I disagree with what they say it means (although others are oddly accurate). 

My To-Read books are grouped in a way that is pretty, and puts things next to each other that encourage me to read something a little different each time. Just in the small yellow section alone, I have Mudbound (Hillary Jordan's multifamily saga historical fiction), Born a Crime (Trevor Noah's memoir about growing up in South Africa under apartheid), Okay Fine Whatever (Courtenay Hameister's chronicling her year of doing things she was afraid of), There There (Tommy Orange's debut novel told from 12 voices about the urban Native American experience), and I Saw a Man (Owen Sheers' suspenseful thriller involving the widower of a journalist killed in a drone strike), all coexisting in the same space -- totally different books, living in same-hued harmony. Paperbacks and hardcovers, side by side. 

This does not happen on my other shelves, which are grouped by genre and then alphabetical by author, with the exception of my "Special Shelf," a small bookcase dedicated to only my most special books and authors. I have a separate space for hardcovers in all but my Special Shelf, Natural History, and YA Fantasy/Sci Fi Series shelves. 

I may have some control issues. I like things just so. It doesn't bother me, though, that I do have a handful of to-reads scattered in other sections, mostly Natural History, Memoir, and hardcover fiction. It's a little sick that I know where they all are without looking. 

Also a little sick that all Bryce's Stephen King books are shelved in the order they were published, with hardcovers separate from paperbacks.

This bookshelf has Harry Potter and Series of Unfortunate Events, Stephen King paperbacks, then travel in lower left and music in the one with the music art. I like to think that guy up there is keeping watch over that shelf for when I need to start filling it with more books. 

I love bringing this order to my own personal library. I love shopping for my next read on my own shelves (although clearly I do a fair amount of shopping for books on store shelves as well), and having such a variety of genres and titles. I feel lucky to have my to-read collection be so extensive (and always shifting as I read them, shelve them, and put new ones in their place), and to have the time to read and enjoy what I'm reading in a space that clearly values literature of all kinds. 

How do you organize your books? 

Want to read more #Microblog Mondays? Go here and enjoy!