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?

Non-fiction is often more colourful, I find. The fiction shelves are much murkier.

I have two walls of books, used to be in order of genre but they get mixed up so readily and actually I love the look of them tossled and read, the shelves are full so I also have them wedged in on top of each other as well as side by side. They're pretty much all 2nd hand though so don't think colour coding would work well in our house, very few are in decent enough state.

Do however have children's books all on one lower shelf and my erotic literature right at the top

Oh god I couldn't be arsed. My books are loosely arranged into sections; biography, fiction, reference etc. that's it really the bookshelf is too heavy use to worry much about arrangement though I'm extremely proud of it. It's on the landing weighed down with haphazard stacks of books on all the shelves and the top sort of held together by some granite book ends. It's exactly how it's supposed to be

Nope, we just buy a LOT of books, and I am really quite old. Could do with some more purple ones

The brown and black and white ones are tidy now, since the photo, but there are LOADS of them.
We did have a rather pretentious arty conversation about whether a book was beige, mushroom, neutral, magnolia, cream, or something named after Farrow and Ball paint.
Mostly we laughed a LOT when we were doing it

Ooh, seventh is colourbetising a real word. I though we had made it up

This conversation makes me sad. I was made to get rid of about 300 of my books a few years ago. Still find myself searching for one in particular then realizing I no longer have it.

I'm not sure why those saying their books are second-hand as if that makes them less attractive. Surely once a book's been read, it's as good as second-hand and if you don't intend to read it, what's the point? Plus - nothing lovelier than a cracked spine or someone else's inscription on the inside cover.

On my various bookcases I have trialled:

Organised by size
By colour
In alphabetical order
In chronological Order
Fiction vs. non-fiction
Genre

All systems have ended in chaos after a couple of weeks and thats the way I'm doomed to remain. :(

Sorted out the books last week and they are currently grouped into: size, genre and author in a vague pattern.

YABU.

I like things to be ordered.

Ours are sort of coded- black Penguin classics, old orange Penguins, Persephones, Picadors and Viragos etc etc. We used to use the alphabet but the shelves were so much uglier than they are now. Most of all, we can actually find everything now. It also links our old reading habits to specific eras (eg Picadors and Viragos to the 80s and 90s) and it's nice to get a sense of that history just by looking at the different clusters.

Although I don't class myself as visual I realise that I am when it comes to books. I won't get a kindle for that reason as when I tried one I felt very disconnected from the reading experience. I have a strong visual memory of my childhood books too.

My bookshelves are arranged in alphabetical order, by surname. ishoos

A bookcase like that in the OP is just BEGGING to be rearranged into a random pattern.
Or a smiley face.

My books are ordered by subject/genre, then by author then by series and date within author. This makes me relaxed.

This will out me to anyone who knows me but....one of my happiest memories is of when I used to live in a bedsit and I had a fridge full of books arranged in colour order. I very rarely ate fresh food in those days and had no bookcase so decided the enormous fridge would do. It was jammed full of books and was like a giant literary rainbow. I yearn for the day when I can recreate this.
And I am neither a ponce, nor indeed a twat.

Patsys I love that mine are mainly second hand - I also crack the spines, fold over the pages, I like a book to be lived in and don't really like them brand new

Agent - when I worked in a library ( many years ago), they had lists of fiction authors by genre. They may still, just ask.

you're not the only one happy

happyhazy that's proper Bohemian-like, that is!

Go on crapbag just do a few and see how it looks...

Then come back at 3am when you CAN'T STOP COLOURBETISING

Bwahaha! Do you have there Crapbag? That helps!

Ha ha, I think DH would wonder what the hell I am doing now. He is going out on Sunday though. I may rearrange then and I won't get moaned at.

I do wonder whether people with colour coded bookshelves actually bother reading the books. I would have a terrible time finding anything. Especially when you get books that are by the same author but have different coloured spines.

My books are grouped into subjects. All the fiction ones are shelved alphabetically. Non fiction ones within the same genre are generally alphabetical, except historical non-fiction which is chronological.

And it was time consuming to set it up, but now that it's done, it's so simple and easy to locate any book I want.

Tried it, LonelyCloud. I need to use my books, and colour-coding is truly the only thing that works.

It's probably because our library is so lop-sided. Historical non-fiction, for example, couldn't be chronological for us because we have a few blocks of lots of books on quite specific periods.

I used to work in a large chain bookstore, and dreamed of staying late one night with a few co-workers and reshelving ALL the books this way...

Kept my job, instead.