in thinking that a bookshelf on which the books are arranged by the colour of their spines

[Alliwantisaroomsomewhere]

...is one of the ponciest and twattiest things EVER?

I saw a pic of this in a magazine today - it looked lovely but WHY WHY WHY would you do that?

It screams pretentiousness and poncetwatickness. Or AIBU?

Same as Brian, I guess we have visual memories.

Yes the silver and orange Penguins look lovely.

I don't see how it would make any difference in a charity shop - aren't they all jumbled together anyway?

I tried to find a historical novel in our librarys fiction bit Fried, and it was impossible! I usually go for books that are by subject and hadn't looked at fiction before, how do you find something you like if you've not got a specific author in mind?

Mine are vaguely placed by genre and author, with series together if possible (well, it was possible when we moved in, but with authors writing more books it's got tricky.) We have children's books on reachable shelves, reference books where needed (so the computer programming books are in the study, the travel and cookery in the living room) and scary (e.g. horror or some hard scifi) or precious (first editions, our theses, really nice bindings) books out of the children's reach in the study. Big books are together, with paperbacks two deep.
Colour... well, I think our collections are too varied to possibly get colours and sizes to match well enough. I'd suspect the owners of doing that old fashioned thing of buying by the lot to get a pretty, full, shelf. All, and I mean absolutely all, of our books on our shelves are read or used (in the case of reference). Many more than once. (The to-read piles are piles and are not yet shelved.)
However, I would prefer people to have and read books and to have them on display than a house devoid of books, or where there are just a few and they're hidden as if the residents are ashamed of reading.

I like it. I don't think its poncey or twatty, I think its perfectly logical, and tidy looking. What's not to like?

Genre/era, author/editor, title/alphabetical here...

I have seen the profile photo on here too, but who is it? That will drive me mad. I really like the look and plan on having shelving made to do this in my office

Brian - I found I had to concentrate a lot harder to scan the author/titles on the spine because of the similar colours. Whereas with your own book shelves you would be familiar with the contents iyswim so can recognise books more easily.

I am going to out myself here but I did for many years have mine organised by date of publication until Dh convinced me that by author was slightly less anal. Loved having them by date though, actually made lots of sense and was easy to find things... Sigh, maybe will do it again one day...

I was working in a second-hand bookshop when a TV crew came in to buy shelves of books by the yard for a television set. God, we hated them.

But yes, MadderHat, there's nothing more soulless than a house without books. Quite a few of my friends are v educated yet have NO books on view in their homes. I just don't get it.

ooops I'm a twat, i only have nice hardback books on show (i inherited them from my dad) and they are in a nice pattern of red, green, red, green and then an entire collection all together. I also have my cds in alphabetical order.

I do mine by colour! It looks nice and I like the way it mixes books up - I hate books classified by author / topic at home, it makes it feel institutional. And I remember where my books are easily this way too.

I have a colour coded rainbow wall of books, imo it looks great and it wasn't hard to do BUT it's incredibly annoying when you want to read a specific book as first you have to remember the colour of the spine ...
When i get a new book shelf bigger house I'm going to go back to alphabetical by author, far easier.

If someone likes it it's not poncetastic surely! it's just what someone likes. Books are books. Plenty worse things to get upset about !

I did my cds like that once, for a laugh. Back in the day of CDs. It was mainly to piss off nerdy muso ex boyfriend.

Or you could get very upset because it suggests books are merely decoration.

I know someone who has arranged their books by colour - they have loads on floor-to-ceiling shelves in their living room and it looks great Wouldn't be for me really, though - I prefer a thematic approach and have sadly got rid of too many novels due to successive house moves. I have some relatives and friends who are educated and who read but keep their books out of sight at home, one or two have told me that they feel that having bookshelves and CD racks is just an uncool form of showing off. I reckon they are just slaves to fashion, and I am hoping to start a 'books do furnish a room' type revival!

I have tried so many visual cataloguing systems over the years (up to about 700 books at one time).

This is the best.

Seriously. If you're not actually going to break out the index cards and spine labels, colour-coding is the only thing that works. The one thing you can always easily visualise about a book is what colour it is. We have a split into fiction and non-fiction, but within those it is colour-coding.

Colour order seems lovely except it would do my head in. For example I have a load of Arthur Ransomes but some are hardback and some are paperbacks. The paperbacks are blue and the hardbacks green or have paper covers in a variety of covers. They need to be together not spread around according to their colour. These aren't the only ones.

Hem hem
Please see profile

It leads to amazing discoveries and strange juxtapositions.
And also a LOT of asking DD, who is house librarian, what colour Terry Pratchett is and where the buggery bollox has she hidden the crochet book.

Still love it though and I am not pretentious at all, moi :o

Aha Norks it was you! (see up thread).

meryl strop, well maybe some people do think that, each to their own

And OP, YABU
:)

Norks do you buy books just because they have a colourful spine?
Most of mine are muted colours or are not one single colour. I didn't even consider it when choosing my reading material, must put moe thought into these things.

Hm. Actually there appear to be about 700 books now after the big clear-outs. They breed.