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Off Tangent Thoughts… while organising your bookshelf

Good morning bookworms!
Today we are doing another Off Tangent Thoughts (OTT) which was created by Charvi @ Not Just Fiction. This fortnight’s topic is a freebie because it’s the 5th week of the month, so I am going back to the very first prompt: thoughts you have while organising your bookshelf.
However… instead of off-tangent thoughts (because my books are currently sorted by rainbow, so it’s really just a “is this blue spine redder or yellower than the one next to it?”) I’m going to explain my shelving thoughts to you (which may end up devolving into off-tangent thoughts anyway)…


Now, I don’t know about you guys, but I am usually VERY PARTICULAR about where my books sit on my bookshelves. However, when we moved into this house back in June and I got brand new bookshelves (???) I decided to do something very different for me. Which is RAINBOW SHELVES.
This might not seem that strange to some, but let me tell you how my books were arranged prior to this. Firstly by genre (fantasy, paranormal, sci-fi, contemporary, romance, crime/mystery, classics, graphic novels and comics, childrens), then author surname (A-Z), then by series, and within the series they had to be in numerical order (yes, even if they published a prequel last, the prequel was first on the shelf). If the author had multiple series, then the first series would be the one with the earliest publishing book date. Series were also usually stacked up, with the first book on top, as this usually took up less room (I have many series that are longer in length than they are the height of the book).
This may seem like a lot of effort, but you could tell me any book that I owned and I would be able to reach out and grab that book within about 5 seconds. Rainbows are very aesthetically pleasing, but if I can’t remember what colour spine a book has, then I. AM. SCREWED. (Like, the cover of Heartstopper Vol 1 is green, but the spine is pink. I didn’t know this so I spent almost an hour looking for this book.)
Obviously there are exceptions to this rule, as only one wall of bookshelves is currently rainbowed (which I showed you all the other day… no I can’t remember which post it was). So, without further ado, let’s talk about my other wall of shelves (which is kind of a mess… so no judgement)!

Photo of my non-rainbow book shelves. This is a collection of 'limited editions' and special books, but also favourite authors by shelves.
Ugh. What a mess!

Honestly, sharing this photo is giving me hives. Let’s go top to bottom, left to right.

  1. Children’s books (there’s a lot of Enid Blyton)
  2. High fantasy: Neil Gaiman and David Eddings
  3. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books
  4. Sarah J Maas and the DC Icons books
  5. Maria V Snyder and Twilight
  6. (out of photo) James Patterson’s Private series, other crime books, and some autobiographies
  7. Graphic novels and comic books… plus Tolkien
  8. Classics (B&N leatherbound children’s, Austen clothbound, Little Women clothbound, Shakespeare)
  9. Maggie Stiefvater books
  10. More high fantasy:  Garth Nix, Kate Forsyth, Raymond E Feist, Laini Taylor. However, stacked in front of this is my book haul for this month.
  11. Random books I couldn’t fit in the rainbow
  12. (out of photo) Tilly and Louise Bagshawe books
  13. Kind of a Jay Kristoff (and Aimee co-authored books) shelf, but The Lotus War trilogy and the LIFEL1K3 books are in the rainbow, as are all the other Aimee books… So I guess a Nevernight and co-authored space books shelf…?
  14. Holly Black books
  15. Harry Potter books
  16. Cassandra Clare books
  17. Janet Evanovich books
  18. (out of photo) additional Janet Evanovich books and book boxes I haven’t unpacked.

As you can see, I also just have STUFF everywhere. I haven’t sorted my book box merch in like 6 months, and I also haven’t really sorted out my desk enough to figure a way to keep the stationery from overflowing to my bookshelves.
The other thing to note is that a lot of these shelves will be fuller by the end of the year. Once all my preorders for the rest of the year come in, I’ll be back to cramming books into random spaces.
So, I guess the next stage will be … haul or reorganise?

Are you this crazy about your bookshelves?

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