Please settle an argument, am I odd?

[sashh]

So my carer has just come into my office and made a remark about my 'eclectic' book collection.

I responded that they are organised by Dewey-decimal system.

He claim this is odd.

In order not to drip feed my cookery books are in the living room and in spine colour order and fiction is kept on my kindle.

I do not think I am odd. I think it is completely sensible to have text books organised this way.

It's not weird and creepy. It is a bit odd though. But if it works for you it's fine

@Mypathtriedtokillme

Nonfiction by subject, cooking in the kitchen if used a lot the rest are with non fiction, fiction by author and books I disliked are put the street shared library box/house thingy so they can find someone who doesn’t think they are a steaming pile of shit.

Books arranged by colour order sets my teeth on edge...Don't know why...I just have books in size order, but organise them how you like.

@Looubylou

I'm an avid reader, but read once and then ditch them. Do you all have enormous houses?

They’re talking reference books here dear, not Mills & Boon.

Cookery books

Plus if you’ve read one Mills and Boons you’ve read them all.
It’s the same story every time just different character names and setting.

We have loads of books. I organised fiction by author surname and non-fiction by subject.

Any system that helps you find a specific book quickly is a good system.

YANBU

Mine are organised by category and my Agatha Christies are arranged by publication date.

@Mypathtriedtokillme

Plus if you’ve read one Mills and Boons you’ve read them all. It’s the same story every time just different character names and setting.

Many years ago I lived in a ''Condemned'; house in Swaton Rd, E3 for a short time...It hadn't been lived in since the 1960's and there was a pile of ''Mills and Boon'' in one corner.

I picked one up and read one..then another, for the lack of anything else to read {No TV} and definitely no internet in those days
Curiously unsatisfying, each one had the same storyline:

Good but plain girl gets new job.
Male is handsome but unpleasant and stand offish.

Male eventually softens and sees what a good woman the heroine is, as she makes him food, cares for him and is supportive.

Male marries Heroine.

These were 1960's books, maybe earlier, not exactly Helen Dunmore in plot.

Condemned house was a good shelter at a desperate time {Teenager}...It had a lovely atmosphere.

I looked on Google earth at it recently, expecting to see it swept away, and to my delight it had been rescued , the huge crack in the retaining wall repaired. Rightmove showed the dear old house to have been renovated over the years , but still recognisable inside, with it's lovely wooden shutters.

I took a tiny 3'' Guinness bottle from there as a memento which I still have decades later. House was untouched since 1880's, like a timewarp.

@TeenMinusTests delighted to see someone speaking up for the colour bookshelves

I have mine by colour...I have a lot of books. My memory is very visual and works as a described by a PP. if I am thinking about a book I remember the physical characteristic esp colour easier than the authors name, so yes....I do go “ah that one was yellow”. I also like how it brings very different book styles together abd next to each other. Paperbacks are in different bookcases to non-fiction and hardbacks mainly due to shelf height (not mixing paperback & hardback - hmmm....is that odd?). Cookbooks in the kitchen.

@Badgerstmary

Doesn’t everybody keep all their non-fiction books together in categories. How else would you know where else to find a book? Ok, I don’t use the system to ensure I have the categories in a certain order. Cookery books are all in the kitchen for example.

No, everybody doesn't. I can find what I need.

OP, it may be relatively unusual, but it's not "odd", which has unpleasant overtones and this person needs to mind their language. Order your books any damn way you please.
All this "ooh, you do it that way, why not be like normal people"? Yuck. Boring. Be yourself.

I don’t have an order for mine, they just get plonked on the shelf if they’re something I would re-read or pass on to someone else.
If they’re neither, they go in a box in the cupboard which then goes at the end of the drive for anyone to help themselves to when full.
I don’t think yabu for keeping your reference books in a specific order, it sounds like you have that many that it’s actually useful!

I’m lacking in shelf space and have stupid structured shelves that waste space between the rows of books, so some of mine are piled on top of the rows
I’d love someone to come along and dd my books. Fiction by birth date is inspired.

Colour has never really worked for me as I often remember the colour of the cover but the spine is either a different colour or faded. But until recently I could find any book by sense memory and didn’t need a system.

For those that organise by colour, how does that work with children’s books? Almost every recent series we’ve bought has been a rainbow and if they were organised by colour the series would all be mixed up with each other. Every time they do this on the Home Edit, it sets my teeth on edge.

One of life’s greatest pleasures is contemplating someone else’s bookshelves.

Series are shelved in series order. Colour irrelevant.

My bookshelves are arranged in height order. But also keeping series (HP, His dark materials, mortal instruments etc) together.
It’s quite a skill.

Good grief. You're nearly all insane.

I have far too many books. And apart from my travel guides and travel literature all being together in a separate room, and my children's books being together, my books aren't organised at all. Yet I know where to find specific books (or at least which shelf they're on). Unless I'm in a public library I like books to be shelved reasonably randomly. I grew up in a house full of books, and the joy of it was picking something up at random (from an eclectic collection ) rather than from a genre, an author or any other similarly organised shelf.

How can book organisation be creepy?

My 2000 books are not in any order but I know where everything is. If your system (or lack of) works for you then it isn’t odd.

The “oh dear, you don’t understand what “eclectic” means” comments are...odd

The “oh dear, you don’t understand what “eclectic” means” comments are...odd

LOL, yes we had a laugh about that, 50% of his degree is Linguistics.

Thank you everyone. We (Carer and I) have had fun reading this and I love that other people sort their books too, and I admire those of you who don't but still know where their books are.

@sashh

The “oh dear, you don’t understand what “eclectic” means” comments are...odd

LOL, yes we had a laugh about that, 50% of his degree is Linguistics.

Thank you everyone. We (Carer and I) have had fun reading this and I love that other people sort their books too, and I admire those of you who don't but still know where their books are.

I didn’t think anyone was implying your carer didn’t know what ‘eclectic’ meant, only that you responding to a remark about the eclecticism of your books with the reply that they’re arranged according to the DD seems a bit of a non-sequitur.

I mean, mine are eclectic — they are only partly unpacked in a new house and I can see Frank Kermode’s The Sense of an Ending piled on top of Heinrich Boll’s Irish Journal and Knit Yourself the Christmas Story — but their total lack of organisation doesn’t make then any less so...?

PS. I admire your organisation!

My cook books take up a wall in my kitchen - I have ~8 rows of spice racks filled with cook books, cover page facing out, so I can easily see what’s what.

All our other books are on the living room bookshelf, grouped according to genre - general fiction, classics, travel, auto/biography, children’s, politics, history, reference, etc, etc. Probably not that different to DD, but without the actual system in place.

Of course you need a system, if there are a lot of them!

@thelegohooverer

Children’s series fiction paperback books in separate bookcase in family room. Agree, different system needed. These sit naturally in “series families” which are then height matched to fill the shelves. These tend to be the outgrown classic books (famous five, narnia). Non-fiction and current reading (Percy Jackson, etc) in kids rooms - they arrange anyway they like !

It depends on how many books and genres you have. If all of your 30 cookery books are organised this way it would obviously be unusual as usually you’d separate subgenres of a very substantial collection this way. My fiction books are organised alphabetically by author because I have so many I’d never find one otherwise. Everything else I cluster by genre, eg 20 art books, 10 wine books etc. Ultimately though, the books are for your pleasure snd should be organised in the way that suits you!

I order my books by :

Fancy bindings, downstairs looking nice in a glazed bookcase

Non-fiction more or less together in another bookcase, organised according to which shelf they fit.

New books I haven’t read in with the non fiction because there’s no room for them elsewhere

Books with really nice covers on a shelving unit with ornaments to look pretty.

Light fiction (detective stories mostly) upstairs landing bookcase so I can grab something to read in bed.

What I’m currently reading is in bed with me.

I don’t think I’m weird at all.