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?

Mine are in alphabetical order and I love them, except the Christmas books which have their own shelf

I'm surprised at how many "book arrangers" there are whether by colour or title or what ever it is! Mine are arranged by how they came out of the moving boxes, except for the orange penguins.

I must confess that when I rearranged our bookshelf now that DS doesn't eat them so we can have the lower shelves the other day I sighed a happy sigh. Why? Because all my David Eddings books fit on one shelf and all go in size and series order.

I worked in a charity shop once and got told off for putting the non-fiction books (which don't have to be in an "order") in size order. They made me do it again, and I raged internally the whole time I was stuck there because it looked so messy

So YABU! Books look lovely in colour/size order.

Looks lovely, but I prefer to have mine arranged by topic so they're easy to find.

I love the look of Norks books and I'm tempted to rearrange mine now....

At the moment I have a wall of books where the fiction is in alpha order and the non-fiction is by genre and size.

I'm not totally happy with it as I don't like a random huge hardback in the middle of a group of smaller paperbacks but I couldn't think of a better way to organise them.

I'm not sure colour is going to work though as the books are three deep on each shelf? I guess I'd have to colourbetise them all and divide them across the three rows in their colours...hmmm.... food for thought

I find that there is some loose correlation between colour and topic/genre

mine are arranged by author.

the book shelves are the only part of my life that is organised!

I really love this long long converssation about how to arrange books. Being "tempted to rearrange books" must rate as one of the most wholesome and innocent temptations in the hisotory of the planet!

Arranged by colour screams "serial killer" to me!!!

(Mine are by subject)

Ours is way too small, we have tons of books stacked anyway that we can get them to fit lol

Oh, I couldn't organise by author. What if I bought one of their books in hardback?

I do wonder what people think when they come to our house. We have a big TV in the living room and no books around downstairs.

What they don't realise is that we have a study upstairs with floor to ceiling bookcases. DD has a floor to ceiling bookcase in her room. DS has two smaller bookcases in his room and we have another children's bookcase (for the oversize books) on the landing. And that's before you get to the teetering towers of 'books in progress' stacked on either side of our bed.

Do you think I ought to put a bookcase in the living room just to reassure visitors we can read?

We have this - you can really appreciate the colours I think. But mainly it's because any other system would fall apart: I would never bother to re-alphabetise or put a book back with its subject-companions. This was I just shove it in with it's colourmates.

As for finding them, I wouldn't say I'm very visual, but I just seem to know which colour spine a book has.

Piprabbit I think you might be right , I am a sjhocking snob for thinking "but where are the books?" when I go to people's houses.

'Oh, I couldn't organise by author. What if I bought one of their books in hardback? '

dh made our bookshelves. i looooooooove them.

What colour is Terry Pratchett?

Er, pale beige with greyish bits on top? :o

and a black hat trills

so glad that this thread that started out insulting ME PERSONALLY has turned into a cheery conversation about book fling systems.

We also have one of each colour of one brand of shower gel, and they are all lined up in the shower in correct order. I have to use them in turn so that the levels go down equally.

Oh dear

book FLING nearly as good as book FILING!

Oh goody, a sunday night owning-books-is-pretentious thread.

Books in sitting room are ordered by coloured because (I quote OP) "it looked lovely" and I like the sitting room to be neat. Why is that pretentious? Or any more pretentious than having anything else in your home ordered by colour or size etc?

Books in bedrooms tend to be added to/moved around more often so are jumbled up.

Bit complicated chezGiraffe and ordered by colour would actually blow DHs mind

I used to do by type, genre and size until one day DH arranged them in alphabetical order. I was outraged and couldn't find anything. Please, please, no one introduce him to Dewey.

I now have several areas of shelving: main bookshelf which is all fiction, A-Z plus a shelf at the bottom for DS. Then I have a couple of shelves of DSs non-fiction in the TV room arranged by genre and size. And then shelving in the dining room which has "unusual" books so all my Murakami and things like Wild Swans, lit. crit, philosophy and so on.

I really like the way the colour looks though, might have to go check out what sort of colours I have.

Oh bollocks. I now want to do this.

I have about 2000 books and it will take days.

And DP will mock me, like he did when I alphabeticised them....

I may be outing myself but I have done this. We have floor to ceiling bookshelf across a whole wall in both our living room and landing. I spent a lovely morning organising them into colour. Tbh it looks best downstairs with all our reference/art/photography books rather than novels.

I don't care what anyone thinks it give me great pleasure.

my local charity shop does this and it looks really good, but they have hundreds and hundreds of books. I have a lots of books and floor to ceiling bookshelves but I arrange them by genre, I couldn't do it by colour as I have a terrible memeory and would have to memorise the cover of every single book, phew its mind boggling!