Yesterday, whilst membelek my latest read, my Abah asked me :

"How do you catalogue your books?"

I tell you, I was floored. Sebab - I don't have shelf space. I used to arrange books by the same author together, but as you can imagine, that was put to an end when I ran out of shelves. Then, to create some kind of order, I put them according to size (no, I do not joke). That ended too, when again, I ran out of space. So now my books live 2-rows-per-shelf, back-to-back, squeezed mish-mash wherever I can find the space. Which means the back row of books memang tak nampak so a whole lotta digging is required. My books live everywhere all over the house.

So, to answer the question, I cheerily volunteered, "My books are catalogued into Read, and Unread..."

Of course, I also told him how I have a database of my books (I'm quite particular about updating it too!). I could hardly tell the old man though, that my Unreads are waaaaayyyy more in number than my Read cache. Teeheehee...

By genre for me: religion, history, biography, fiction (which itself is separated by sub-genres of sci-fi/fantasy, humour, contemporary, crime). My comic book hardcovers and trade paperbacks of course get a row of shelves all of their own because Batman doesn't like to play with other books that have no pictures in them. He's elitist like that.

But like you I'm running out of space and there is no way to add more shelves. And like you, I already have a row of books behind another row of books due to the scarcity of space. So if I want to read the ones at the back row, I have to move the ones in the front row first to get to them.

Plus, there is a small corner of the shelf that is reserved for books that are to be read but they are overflowing and are threatening to take over the shelves of the books that are already read! I'm gonna have to restructure my shelving one of these days.

Only the comic collection is shelved alphabetically. Everything else is squeezed in willy-nilly. As long as they are in the right section (agatha christie's crime fiction shouldn't be in the History shelf, for example).

Other people look at my shelves and they see chaos. But I can always find my books even though they are not alphabetized. Then they ask me, "What if people want to read your books? How can they find them in this mess?" To which I reply, "What do you mean people? What makes you think I allow people to come in here and take my books without my permission? This isn't a lending library."

They usually laugh when I say that and stop laughing when they realize I'm serious.

So, to answer your question: by genre, non alphabetized (except for the comics).

My kids were terribly confused when they first found out that my brother has a collection of comics that they're not allowed to touch. Tengok aje. Pegang tak boleh. Belek tak boleh. Bawak keluar dari plastic lagi la tak boleh!

Hahahahaha

Oh, those are the "floppies". The 22-page comics that come out monthly. I have those as well back when I collected them in the 80s up till the mid-90s. But they are in plastic files and inside cabinets. The comics I buy now are the hardcover collections which look like 'proper' books so off to the bookshelf they go...but at a special shelf reserved just for them. Away from the other, common, cheap books with all the words and no pictures in them. My bookshelves practice apartheid. Shock! Horror!

Kataklicik wrote: "My kids were terribly confused when they first found out that my brother has a collection of comics that they're not allowed to touch. Tengok aje. Pegang tak boleh. Belek tak boleh. Bawak keluar da..."

Hahahha, I have a friend with lots of sealed comics too! He says they'll be priceless in the future.

I just bought a new bookshelf for my books :D I catalogue by genre too, unless... a shelf is filled and I still have more to put in... so I stack them on top. Yea, it's pretty messy, but I have some sort of a system :P

David wrote: I have a friend with lots of sealed comics too! He says they'll be priceless in the future.

Yeah, and I will be the King of Planet Earth!

I catalogue by fiction, non fiction, facts, comics.....and arrange the books by their size and height ...but of course after few days it will be messy LOL

I tried cataloging according to read and to-read before but it took too much effort. Especially until recently my adik ipar just tumpang her study books on my shelves so right now I am so running out of space. So truth be told the latest approach right now is I-can't-be-bothered approach.

Faizah Roslaini wrote: "The latest approach right now is I-can't-be-bothered approach"

Which is the best kind of approach when it comes to shelving books. But taking a couple days off to sort out the books on our shelves is also a fun and satisfying thing to do. Well, fun and satisfying for me anyway.

I beg to differ... sebab I can never sort out books successfully. It's fun, but never satisfying sebab I always end up on the floor poring through the books, flicking thru tengok gambar, thinking I-should-read-this-next to berapa puluh buku hahahaha

And so I do like Faizah's I-can't-be-bothered approach!!

I have one shelf in my room and another set of shelves covering half the living room wall downstairs. The one downstairs is shared by the whole household and is pretty hopeless; right now the books are sorted by colour, of all things. It gets organised by whoever feels like cleaning the place up. :P

On my shelves, where I keep my favourite and newer books, they're separated into tiers --

1. top most tier: books I've read and loved (this shelf isn't so full because when I loan books to friends -- the ones you can trust to take care of your books! -- the books tend to come from this shelf)
2. second tier: books to read (this one is way too full already)
3. bottom tier: books I've read but are not favourites.
When my shelf gets too full I have to decide what to send downstairs!

The books on the first tier gets ordered pretty much by author and genre and book size, the second one has no order at all, the last one by order read. Not very sensible at all. :D