What I think about you based on how you organize your books

snap judgements and literary neuroses

Finally, after a few months in our new house, all our books are up on their shelves. It’s gotten me thinking about how I like to look at people’s bookshelves. Like to look at them is perhaps the wrong word. I want to look at them. I am drawn to looking at them. I feel compelled by the desire to look at them and restrained only by my sense of politeness. Studying someone’s bookshelves feels a little indecent, like going through their medicine cabinet. Indeed, if you think about it, bookshelves are more revealing than medicine cabinets. Medicine cabinets (especially the ones available to guests (not that I’ve inspected any!)) are predictable— TUMS, cold medicine, a spare toothbrush, maybe some anti-depressants. But bookshelves are not predictable; they are revelatory.

To be fair to myself, I do not think my interest in people’s bookshelves is of the kind of curiosity that killed the cat— I’m not trying to gather embarrassing information or pass judgement on people’s literary tastes (though I will confess this sometimes happens as a byproduct). No, I’m mainly just interested, fascinated. Interested in what books people have. Interested in what books people choose to display in public spaces. And I’m interested in how (and why) people organize their books in the way they do.

Here I do find myself leaping to judgements. I think there are many good ways to organize one’s books (though, obviously, mine is the best). But there are also many insane and psychopathic ways to organize one’s books. So, am I judging you for having Twilight?? Left Behind? Twelve Rules for Life? No. (OK, a little). But if you’re organizing your books by color, I’m sorry but I have drawn the immediate and unshakeable conclusions about your personality and character. But of course, there are several levels to how you organize your books: there are the broad strokes, the larger categories into which each bookshelf falls. And then there are the smaller subsets of organization, the most common of which (I think) are: alphabetical, chronological, and size. Not that you asked, but here is what I think about people based on their bookshelves. And at the end of this, I will share the correct way to organize bookshelves (e.g. mine). And tell me yours too.

Alphabetical:

On the face of it, this is a rational way to organize one’s books. It makes sense. You should be able to find what you need to find on any occasion. It’s rational. But it’s so rational that it doesn’t make sense. Are you seriously telling me you’re going to put the Harry Potter series next to Emile by Jean Jacques Rousseau?You’re telling me that doesn’t disturb you on an unutterable level? (Though, now that I’ve written it, on some intuitive level this pairing makes sense to me). You mean you’re going to put Phillip Pullman next to Plato? Your reason has led you to madness. Verdict: sociopath.

A further revelatory questions: within the alphabet, how do you organize? So, let’s say we get to your Elena Ferrante shelf: how do you organize her books amongst themselves? Is it by their release date? Their alphabetical title? Or (this used to be a favorite of mine) the height of the book so that they appear pleasingly on the shelf. My opinion is that the most sociopathic way to organize books would be alphabetically both by author and by title; this would make you a prisoner to your own rationality. Everything would make sense, but nothing would be sensible. I would fear to drink the wine of the person whose shelves were organized in this way. For you, I have only the words of G.K. Chesterton: “the madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory.” Please seek help.

Shelves at the (sadly now closed) Wild Goose Meeting House in Colorado Springs

By Color:

If you organize your books by color, I immediately come to two conclusions: 1. You don’t have that many books 2. You don’t “use” your books (i.e. you only read them once or every once and a while. To me, this style is both aesthetically displeasing and organizationally inefficient. I use my books— not all of them all the time, of course, but if I want to consult Coleridge, I want to know where Coleridge is. And I want to be able to find all of Coleridge, not one book in the blue section and one in the purple. If I had to hunt down books in this way it would exasperate me. I suppose this is why I usually come to the conclusion that these sorts of shelves are full of more contemporary books that one is liable to use once— not reference books or historic texts or whatnot. Partially I think this because I think that contemporary fiction and nonfiction at the moment tends to go for more bright colors so it’s easier to organize in this way, whereas older and more reference books tend to be navy blue or maroon. When a see a shelf organized by color then, I assume it is full of mostly contemporary books that will only be read once and can thus afford to be difficult to find and to function mostly as décor.

On that note, though: I tend to find this style of decoration aesthetically displeasing. For one, to me it’s overstimulating and it’s “too” colorful. No, maybe that’s not right. I don’t mind color— I love pops of color. I think to me the displeasing part is the blocks of color— it’s not integrated within other colors, like a pop of pink on a green rose bush. To me it’s just too much, to BAM, too LOOK AT ME. I prefer my colors dispersed like nature.

The only place that I have seen books organized by color in a way that I liked was at the (sadly now closed) café and bar The Wild Goose. I didn’t mind the color coordinated arrangement there for several reasons. One, it was aesthetically appealing, in part because the respective shelves were broken up by other shelves. So, it wasn’t one continuum of monochromatic shelves and instead functioned as little pops of color. Two, it really was mainly for decoration so there was no practical need for the books to be organized in a reasonable matter. If you were seated by the white shelf, for instance, you got a sort of Russian roulette of random books on everything from home brewing to spiritual practices to the history of Ireland. In that sense, it’s randomness actually functioned appropriately for the space. If you’re a bored coffee drinker, it’s nice to be able to peruse a shelf of random white, blue, orange or pink books while you wait.

By genre:

Overall, I think this is very sensible, probably because it’s the closes to how I organize my book. It’s functional— you know where to look for what. It shows sensitivity to different kinds of books and reading. However, it’s not as easy as you might sometimes think. And I think a lot of this boils down to how capacious your sense of genre is and secondarily how you organize within each genre. So, for example, Rowan Williams. Obviously, you could put good deal of Williams on a theology shelf, but what about Silence and Honey Cakes? In my mind that needs to go on the “spiritually enriching devotional books” shelf. Or Marilyn Robinson. There’s the novels, obviously, but what do you do with Reading Genesis? Is it theology? (I’d say probably not). Is it devotional? Books about books (literary criticism)? My impulse would be to put this one on devotional books and put her others in novels— but I’d draw various impressions based on how you dealt with this dilemma, all of which would make me think you were a thoughtful reader who did sometimes need access to your books.

Once the shelve is whittled down to poetry do you organize alphabetically? Chronologically? By size? These different approaches all valid (in my mind) in their own ways tell me much about you. Alphabetically: that you are orderly and don’t care too much about the idea of “corpuses.” Chronologically: that you get really into author’s works, and like to say things like “In early (Ishiguro, Augustine, Lewis) you’ll notice x.” I’d say you were a little pretentious, but maybe you just really care about it. By size: you do care about being able to find your books, but beyond that you’re happy to forgo organization for an aesthetically pleasing arrangement. On some deep level you’re bothered all the books don’t line up pleasingly, and wish author’s books would be published in uniform sizes or decrease in size proportionally with each book.

Chronological:

If you organize your books entirely chronologically, to be honest, I salute you. This is high level neurotic behavior, but also, I respect the fact that you have such a developed sense of the development of various movements (literary, philosophical, theological, etc.) throughout history, and that this is represented on your shelves. But I’ve never seen someone really organize their books this way. So, the sort of person who organizes their books this way is just a person I’ve invented in my head. Maybe it’s me. In the future.

The Correct Way to Organize Books (my own)

Ok, my turn. I’ll you peruse the organization of my books and let you make your judgements. I organize my books primarily by genre and chronology. I have two big shelves which are primarily what I think of as “history of thought” which ranges from Plato through to post modernism based on their time period. Within these historical books which we might consider as “primary sources” I do include their appropriate “secondary sources” (so, books about Plato). The secondary sources tend to me books to help you understand the historic books. Biographies have their own separate shelves and so do books which might be about a figure in the past who I think belongs in contemporary philosophy/theology/literary theory, etc. So once we’re done with the chronologically organized “history of thought” books, we move to the shelves by genre. Generally speaking, the genres are things like “contemporary theology” and “literary criticism” and “devotional books” and “classic novels” and “serious novels” and “fun novels.” These are not strict delineations and left entirely to my own (and my husband’s) caprices. The division of fiction (of which we have a lot!) is based on the feeling that it feels weird to put Agatha Christie next to Samuel Beckett. A lot of it is vibes. But then, because I am an aspiring neurotic I do like to organize my authors internally by when they released each book. Perhaps this has been the case since my own books and cherish the feeling of development their succession gives give.

So that’s me! What do you think? And how do you organize your shelves?