What books would you put in the front room?

[LadyIsabellaWrotham]

We're reorganising our house and putting a bunch of shelves in one of the alcoves in the living room: about seven foot high by three foot wide, so a decent slug of space for books which have been left homeless by other elements of reorganisation.

Genuinely befuddled as to which books to put there, and I need to make a decision in order to decide how to space the shelves.

Which sort of books would you put there for the best aesthetic effect/efficiency?

A) Fiction authors A:G, in strict alphabetical and/or chronological order, including full-size hardbacks alongside the scruffy second hand paperbacks (so less space efficient)
B) Non-fiction hardbacks and trade paperbacks classed by general subject in a vaguely Dewey Decimal orientation (why yes, I did intern in a library, how did you guess)
C) Carefully collated high status novelists/poets/playwrights only: pre-1930, Nobel Laureates and Booker nominees preferred, in order to give a highly somewhat misleading view of our highbrow literary tastes
D) A few selected writers of whom we have a critical mass: starting with Georgette Heyer obviously.
E) Classic children's literature
F) Rainbow order by colour of spine (obviously this is a joke, I'm not a monster)
G) Other, all suggestions welcome
H) Declutter them all and buy a Kindle (this option included for the convenience of the Kondo-minded posters who always say this)

Sorry - just meant to quote the first sentence.

In the lounge we have the classic children's books, some classic literature, some art, history and wildlife books. Plus maps. They are all the ones I go back to often.

F rainbow. I did this once for fun. It's fun, do it!

What about an interesting mix that could start a conversation with guests? Or simply the ones that bring happy memories?
I have an abridged edition of Crime and Punishment; one on aboriginal law; and two on political theory on my end table.
For me, reminds me of a time i felt like the world was opening up to me. 🤷‍♀️

In the living room I have a shelf of books that I’ve borrowed from other - as I/they are likely to see them when having a chat do it is easy to return them - and recently read books I’m likely to offer to lend people.
Beyond that, pretty art books I might dip into occasionally, gardening and wildlife reference books (easier to grab if I’m off birdwatching or need to check something in the garden)

The kitchen has the cookbooks and overflow of gardening/plant books.

Fiction is mostly upstairs. Heyers have two shelves in the bedroom where I can grab them most easily for endless re-reads. The rest are roughly shelved by genre.

Modern fiction, crime, children’s classics, travel books and most non-fiction in the office. Science fiction, fantasy, classics , science, feminism and biographies/memoirs in our bedroom. Craft books on the shelves above the sewing machine.

The larger hardbacks are stored by necessity somewhat erratically on a wide shelf on the landing because they’re too big to fit any of the bookshelves.

F. But I don't think it's funny 😁

Surely the ones you will read the most

Which sort of books would you put there for the best aesthetic effect/efficiency?

Your whole opening post is pretentious and vulgar. You arrange books according to their use. If you aren’t using your books then they are there simply for decoration. Just go to an antiquarian dealer and buy them by the yard to fit your colour scheme. Your question and suggested answers are ridiculous. If books were a regular and genuine part of your life, you wouldn’t need to ask such a question.

I also have my childhood collection upstairs. And untouched language degree books. Hammers German Grammar is usefully placed in the hall 😁

Nah. She sounds like someone who enjoys reading and having books and how they are arranged is part of the joy of them. And someone who enjoys writing about all of that in a nice whimsical style.

Nothing pretentious or vulgar about it.

I keep non-fiction in the sitting room - so books about art, interiors, political history etc. - often they're coffee table sized (exhibition catalogues). Fiction and biographies are in the corridors and bedrooms, children's books in their bedrooms, poetry and plays in the bathrooms.

DappledThings I agree entirely. I love a good book arranging session and love to see what other people have too.

I sometimes go to a house which has no books and it feels soulless. No, they are not tucked away upstairs and yes, they might read a classic a day on a Kindle for all I know but a home without books just feels sad.

Some of our books are worth quite a bit so best to keep out of the sun, so that would be a consideration when displaying books

Mine are all in one room as that is the only place I have bookshelves. They are sorted by genre, and alphabetically by author within that (and in date order within that where necessary).
If I had the option of multiple storage areas I'd consider what the room was used for. So, if DC did homework in the kitchen, reference books and dictionaries, etc. would be in there.

Same here.

And as I and another pp said, it depends on how the room is used typically as to what sort of books you'd put there. I don't think OP answered.

DC have their own bookshelves upstairs, none of their books are downstairs. There are other bookshelves and stands (those old fashioned wooden pull apart book stands) in other areas of the house.

I have to group books otherwise I can't find what I'm looking for.

In the big bookcase in the snug are our oversized art and reference books along with fairly recent hard back fiction or 'special' hardbacks, such as signed copies. The shelves are from Tylko and has lots of pigeonholes, some of which I've used to group other similar books - eg all the green-spined Viragos are in one of them. These shelves are arranged to look prettier with plants and so on rather that just a huge slab of books.

Cookbooks are in the kitchen and in the sitting room I have an old glass-fronted barrister's bookcase which houses older first editions, collectables and vintage books.

The upstairs landing are where the rest of the fiction is shelved - about 80 or 90 feet of shelves - and it's all in alphabetical order.

There's a bookcase in our bedroom for my TBR pile and shelves in my study for research books.

A friend once suggested that i organise by colour or that I shelve them spines to the wall so that they wouldn't look as jumbled. I think I hid my twitching at the very thought...

I have always kept reference books downstairs and fiction upstairs. The logic pre-dates the Internet and so each book is where it is most likely to be used. My downstairs bookcases are sorted by subject, more like a bookshop than a library. Gardening on one shelf, cookbooks on another, I also have various series of books that I keep together in their numerical order.

@BurningTheToast that's no friend, that's a monster!

Forgot to mention that I also sort by size due to necessity - need to put the smallest books on the smaller shelves. Big art history books etc are on lower, taller shelves.

Good point. Very few of my books are valuable but some of them did suffer badly from being in a bedroom where they caught the sun. But the front room is on the street so almost always has translucent curtains closed anyway.

Front room is used for a bit of everything, telly, cups of tea, entertaining visitors, working on laptop in the evening on the sofa if I need to do some routine spreadsheet-bashing, sewing, admin. Not a lot of actual reading, but maybe if I had a whole load of books there that would change.

In our house we have the following:

Poetry/plays are in our bedroom
Cook Books are in the kitchen
General knowledge type books and craft books are in the playroom (along with 30 percent of the kids books)
In the sitting room books are grouped roughly by theme and author. Although I have one seasonal 3 shelf book case on the wall (currently christmas/winter books with a few murder/ghost stories thrown in).
In dh's wfh area, he's carefully "curated" a variety of highbrow stuff he has zero interest in reading.
Everything else lives in shelves in the halls apart from the children's books which are mostly in their bedrooms.

Personally I keep novels out of sight, in fact I don't keep many novels once I read them they go to the charity shop. The only books I keep and have on display are hardbacks they are a mix of autobiographies, history, reference, decorating and gardening type books. Personally I think rainbow type organising looks extremely pretentious and has been very overdone.

I'm wrestling with book storage right now. I think my hardback books will go in the bookcase in the living room, along with the dozen books H has.

All the rest are going on shelves in the dining room/office. I've split them up into: work (legal books), useful reference related to work, other non fiction, graphic novels and cartoon books, fiction large and fiction standard size.

I'll keep with alphabetic order for fiction, the non fiction and reference are grouped in subject order then size.

Glad to see people saying that all Stephen King has to be together. Mine have a whole glass fronted cupboard, all to themselves.

I’d put all hardback in the lounge - if you want them for show. Otherwise, just put the books where they land. We have a real eclectic mix and most are in the study - there is some sort of order but really it’s pretty random. I don’t really understand the OP’s angst about this.