Jim Crace wants to know.
I did have mine arranged alphabetically by author name, non-fiction separated from fiction, but when we moved to Norway, abandoned any attempt at order in favour of getting them on a shelf before the mice ate them (they spent a year in boxes in a garage ruled by mice).
Should I try to organise them again? I have over 3000 of them so I can't work out if the effort to do this will be less overall than the hours spent searching for a particular book. If I do, what system works for you?
I try to keep authors together and put trilogies or series in sequence order, but beyond that I'm not organised at all. I don't have a bookcase at the moment where I'm living, I've got mine in piles around the place, wherever I can keep them tidy but it all feels really scattershot, and in the end I find myself getting so tired of the sight of certain books that I sell them or give them to charity. There are only very few I really treasure and those are by my bed. There's an attic full of old ones that really want getting rid of.
You did it the old way for a reason! Alphabetical by author and fiction separated from non-fiction. Especially when you have that many. How the hell else could you? Dewey Decimal?
I don't have 3000, so i just organize them more or less by size. Not in order, mind you. Really I don't know if there is order, I just put the trades together, the MM paperbacks sideways on each side of them (because i don't have book ends) and the hardcovers in the middle to create an aesthetically pleasing slope. (It's not that aesthetically pleasing.)
I did by size/hard/soft for a while. It's a terrible system. I've got 6.5 bookshelves somewhat seperated by genre and organized alphabetically, 2 milk crates full of current reads and 4 piles of to-be-reads in my bedroom, the ones I want to finish sooner are closer to the top of the stacks.
I have I think 7 mostly large bookshelves of various sizes in my 2 rooms at the house I rent. I'm not sure how many books are here, but at least 500. My stuff is basically divided into sort-of genres (fic & lit, sf, fantasy, crime, general nonfic, biography/psychology/sociology, food/health/whatever, reference, etc.) and any author's work is grouped together. Otherwise there's absolutely no rhyme or reason to any of it.
In a pile, just haphazard. I like Calibre for organizing ebooks, but I never use it to read them.
Boxes and stacks. When one comes off the stack, it goes into the box.
I try to keep the stack under my head a little taller than the ones under my shoulders for proper neck support. I like my feet elevated, so the piles are larger there. Okay, I'm not really a wallowing book hoarder, but sometimes it feels that way.
I have a 3-shelf bookcase by my bed that holds my reading-now and reading-next books. I have four 6-foot cases in my front room that hold classics, textbooks, and horror/fantasy/sci-fi/fiction, along with one built-in case for rare books. Picture books and comic books go upstairs in another 6-foot case and in the shelves built in to the low perimeter walls. Craft books go in my studio. Cook books in the kitchen. Video game guide books in the living room.
My husband bought me a Kindle last Xmas. I think it was self-preservation.
I don't have enough bookcases, but I try to keep them separated by genre and then keep the authors together. I have well over 700 books, so it can be a bit of a trick. My girlfriend is about to move in with another 600. I think we are going to end up with bookshelves stuffed in any room with wall space.