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?

Someone linked to a picture of colour sorted bookcases years ago on MN and I loved it so much I copied it. It took chuffing ages though. I could just put all yellow books on a shelf, oh no, not me. It had to go from pale yellow to dark yellow. Hours were spent on rearranging just one shelf to make sure there wasn't a rogue mid yellow lurking in the lemon section.

Why would you be outing yourself, notmostpeople? They're all at it!

But if you want something to read, don't you head to where your favorite authors are on the shelf? If I want to read something new I will go to an author that dh has a lot of and pick one. I wouldn't know where to start with color.

Mind you, if it looks naice I might just give it a go. Dh won't be happy, he has a scientific logical mind which could short circuit if he noticed.

Norksaremessy: WAHAHAHAHAHA @ the shower gels That's just brilliant!

Seriously: I really wish I was that organised / together / anal !

so you dont think I am poncy and twatty anymore, then Alli?
shake on it?

Norks I think yours is sooooooooo good. I must try it, I think I'll need new bookcases as mine are small.
There is also a photo in the current John Lewis magazine (I've no idea why I have that ? - )

Aw, Norks! I did not say that you are poncey and twatty... just that arranging bookshelves the way you do is! (Semantics, I suppose - speaking of which, what colour spine is your dictionary and your thesaurus??).

Now, your shower gel collection: That, my dear Norks (!!) is a whole different matter.

I will let you into a little secret, though. I have arranged one shelf of my bookshelf in colour order. One shelf. All of the same genre (children's books). If you dare so much as to breath a word of this to anyone, I swear I will jumble all your books up and squeeze out random amounts of shower gel into your loo!

YABU. Why shouldn't someone care about this if it makes them happy?

alli hahahahahahahahahahaha.
I will convert you in the end.
Come over...join the COLOURFUL side :)

One of my brothers organizes his by colour. Being the evil younger sister, I enjoy smuggling in strange books I pick up secondhand (Most recent find was about the history of sex toys!) and stuffing them into the wrong colour zone. But I must admit it looks lovely before I mess it up.

My books are organized by topic/author, but as I'm chronically short of shelf space, they're piled in several deep. It does not look lovely. I've taken to buying Kindle books whenever possible.

Oh the arguments my husband and I had about this. In his defence he liked the random combinations of topics the colour ordering brought about. I wanted it divided by genre, period, and possibly language, and author. He even laughed at my spreadsheet!

Now there's no particular order whatsoever, neither by colour nor theme, and that's how we like it best.

If you order by publisher, they are generally the same size with similar detail on spines. Looks lovely and a bit more orderly than colour :)

soggy I like your style and dedication
I agree with the widow's husband. They joy of finding something unexpected, and the odd juxtapositions outweighs the slight annoyance of losing a particular book

But we never lose any! Despite having about 25 meters of shelves and various piles dotted around the house, we often refer to a book we're looking for by its spine, e.g. "Have you seen Song of the Dodo? You know ,the black and red spine"

Alphabetical order here (my novels only)

6 year old enjoyed helping me sort them last Sat.

I'm actually shocked that there's any other way

i do it because that is how i think of the books...

This is all over the interiors magazines like a rash.

Looks way too Try Too Hard, IMO.

My house is in complete chaos at the moment because I decided to reorganise the books yesterday. A lot of them have been in boxes for a year because of building work so now the house is finished I can let them free again. I wish I'd found this thread before I started - we have bookcases all over the house and I couldn't make up my mind how to arrange them. At the moment there are four billy bookcases on the upstairs landing which are full of children's books arranged partly by theme (ballet books, pony books, school stories, historical) and partly by author - Noel Streatfeild, Arthur Ransome etc - and partly by age group. All the detectives are in the spare room (because that's what I always want to read in other people's houses.) Downstairs there is one bookcase of 19th century fiction and one of twentieth, another bookcase for history and one for historical fiction (the biggest one). There are a couple of shelves for non-fiction that isn't history and a shelf for DH's thrillers that aren't proper dectective stories. All the cookbooks are in a bookcase in the kitchen. And the sofa is piled high with books that don't seem to have a category of any kind. Maybe doing it by colour would have been better.

Themumsnot looks like we're all coming round to your library then. Shall I bring cakes ?

i quite like it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but who the fuck has time?????

a motivated teenager with an ipod.
she was VERY happy

My books are arranged this way.it looks great.

Inspired by this thread, I re-organised my bookshelves last night. It was a very happy and relaxing couple of hours and the books are now sorted by COLOUR. It looks fabulous

I also had a cull and I have a huge bag of books for charity.

So to Alliwantisaroomsomewhere

I think it sounds really nice. I might do that myself.

Go for it liketochat1 - it looks serene and inviting. I have whites, blacks, dark hues, pale green, orange, reds and a shelf of gently mixed soft pastels

It only took a couple of hours, the DCs were asleep so it was my time. About 600 books altogether although I didn't sort the hard backs on the bottom shelves.