My favourite book(case)

This evening, I finally packed away this bookcase full of books into seven boxes, one for each shelf.

I reorganised my books into colour order a few months back, after struggling for years to find an organisational system that satisfied me. Alphabetical by author was too simplistic, and grouping by subject matter (feminist theory, fairytales, craft etc) was fine until I found something that didn't fit neatly into any of them, or straddled several subjects. I tried organising the short stories, fiction and non-fiction separately, but then what of writers who have written books that fit in each category? I didn't like the way that a writer who wrote mostly novels would suddenly have one of their books stranded several shelves away, when I had previously grouped them all together.

In the end, I decided to order my main bookcase by colour. All my previous attempts at classification have been abandoned and it's actually quite liberating. Fiction and non fiction nestle up together, united by the fact that they both have a cornflower blue spine. The only problem I have had is that if I can't remember what colour spine a book has, it takes me a little longer to find it than if I had ordered them more conventionally. But ordering my books in this way has made me look on them with fresh eyes, as I search for a particular title I come across other books to read that I might have looked over before when they were grouped by author, or genre.

(I do also have a smaller bookcase that contains a lot of books with either black, white or multicoloured spines - the ones that didn't lend themselves to this system!)

One of my favourite books about books, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, has an essay in which a house is rented to an interior designer for a few months, and on their return the owner finds he has completely re-ordered their books by colour. They are upset that their organisational system has been disrupted, that precious books have been reduced to mere blocks of colour.

Perhaps if I had previously struck upon an organisational system that made complete sense in terms of author, subject matter, style and genre then I wouldn't want to let it go (or have it taken away from me!) but as it is, I've always loved arranging things in colour order, and I've always loved books, so for me this is perfect.

(I've left the image size large so that when you click on it, you can see the image up close and see the spines of the books and read the titles, if you want. I'm always checking out other people's bookcases, although I believe looking at your bookcases will tell me what books you have, not what sort of person you are.)