10 Ways To Organize Books

This is a particularly good solution if you tend to go through phases in your reading where you get super into historical fiction one month, then move on to nonfiction science books another month, and so on. This may not be the best choice if a majority of your books fit into one genre. If you have 6 shelves worth of literary theory but only a handful of Greek plays, there won’t be a ton of variation from shelf to shelf.

If you struggle remembering names, this isn’t going to be an ideal solution. You’re probably going to end up spending more time digging than you’d like when it’s time to grab a certain book. This may not be the best choice for you if the idea of Raymond Chandler mystery stories sitting on a shelf next to Noam Chomsky’s political theory strikes you as a strange combination. [3] X Research source

This is also a super good idea if you have a great visual memory and you don’t have a lot of trouble remembering what book covers look like. While the rainbow-style of color organization is undoubtedly the most popular, you can absolutely play around with it. You could put patches of white books around your shelves, throw in some vertical stacks of red books, and throw some randomized rows in there. [5] X Research source If you don’t have a very diverse collection cover-wise, or you’ve got a bunch of books with multicolored jackets, this may be a tough way to organize since your collection may look imbalanced or disorganized.

This is an especially good way to sort your collection if you have a massive interest in one particular type of literature, since you can break your organization down ever further as your library grows. Someone who reads a lot of scientific nonfiction might break it down further into books about genetics, books about hormones, and so on.

This is an especially interesting way to arrange your books if you’re a huge fan of history, or you own a lot of historical nonfiction. If your collection contains a ton of books from one period of history—like most of the books you own were printed after 1950, for example—this will be kind of tricky. You can do it, but you may need to reference the inside of each book’s jacket to double-check the publication date, and this may not feel particularly intuitive.

If you just can’t find a way to sort your books where your most interesting titles are the most visible, this is a great way to do it. You can even place a few plants or knick-knacks on your top shelves to separate unique mini-collections you own and want to highlight. You might have the first edition of each Harry Potter book up top, leaning against a plant, followed by a stack of Jane Austen novels from the early 1900s. By separating your books, they’ll stand out even more on the shelves. [9] X Research source

If you have a really large collection of books, this may make it hard to keep track of where things are. However, you could combine this with a genre or subject style of organization to make it easier. For example, you could stack all of your poetry on the left side of every shelf, with your favorites on top, followed by nonfiction in the middle of each shelf, and fiction on the right side. [11] X Research source

This is especially smart if you have a bunch of reference books because you’re in medical or law school.

You could also arrange them by height from left to right. Put your tallest books on the left side of each shelf and work your way down to the smallest books. This will create an interesting cascading effect on each of your shelves. [14] X Research source You can still do this if your shelves aren’t modular or asymmetrical. Use a combination of vertical stacks of book and horizontal rows to group books of nearly-identical sizes together. This will have a unique aesthetic effect where your shelves look simultaneously uniform and varied.

Over time, you will eventually fill your shelves out with books arranged in the order you read them. How cool is that? You’ll have this little visual record of your reading habits over the years!