Organizing my bookshelves: How I do it (YMMV—no hate)

Tor Conan, ERB, CAS, Moorcock... and more.It’s time to weigh in on a topic so contentious, so divided, so fraught with the potential for incendiary and orgiastic violence, that to even conceive of a post on it risks burning the entire internet to the ground.
I’m talking about how to organize your bookshelves.
I know, take a breath. Let’s review. 
We have options.
Alphabetical by author, or title. By genre. Year of publication. 
Do you put your favorite books on a shelf nearest to hand? Your rares and antiques behind glass or in some other high, unassailable place? 
What do you put on your shelves (besides books, of course)? For example, comic books? Role-playing game books? What are your thoughts on knick-knacks or action figures, to break things up?
The possibilities are endless. 
Despite my considerable misgivings I’ll tell you how I do it, and then you tell me yours. But no outrage. We can be civil about this.
***
Ahh, love that Nasmith-illustrated Silmarillion.This holiday I got myself a bookcase—six feet high, 37 inches wide, five shelves. It is my fifth bookcase, and possibly my last. At least that’s what I told my wife. She doesn’t read this blog, BTW.
The purchase gave me the opportunity to reorganize my books, an activity I find immensely relaxing and gratifying. I go into a state of flow as I do this, or perhaps active catatonia. It’s like a simultaneous mental game of Jenga (where can I fit all my Edgar Rice Burroughs books together) while remembering there are so many books I need to read, or re-read. Plus I’m reminded how glad I am to have a Ted Nasmith-illustrated copy of The Silmarillion. I need to stop now and admire The Kinslaying at Alqualondë.
It's a lot of fun. I recommend it, if you haven’t done it in a while.
Here’s how I do it.
By genre, subcategorized by author.
Part of my S&S bookcase... lots of REH, KEW, Anderson.I have my sword-and-sorcery on one seven-shelf bookcase by itself, spilling on to a second. 
I’ve got almost two complete shelves of Tolkien. One is on my lone upstairs bookcase, alongside my more literary collection of books.
I’ve got about two complete shelves of horror.  A World War II shelf. A shelf of biographies and non-fiction. One of mostly sword-and-planet. You get the point.
Within those genres I then subcategorize, by author. So on my sword-and-sorcery shelf I’ve got about two shelves of Robert E. Howard. In general fantasy, I group all my C.S. Lewis together, next to a group of Ursula Le Guin and E.R. Eddison.
There are caveats. Many of them.
I’m forced to break my rule when the books are too large to fit on a shelf. Conan the Phenomenon by Paul Sammon resides on an unrelated shelf because it’s oversized, and won’t fit next to my other Conan books which are mostly pocket sized paperbacks. Damnit!
The horror! Is that a figurine in there?Sometimes I break my genre rule for the sake of author solidarity. For example I’m not going to put Stephen King’s Eyes of the Dragon on the fantasy shelf. It goes on the horror shelf, next to the rest of my King books. Even though it is fantasy I can’t bear to have one Stephen King book in another random place.
Sometimes I do break the author rule, for my own utterly singular purposes. I stuck the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy apart from my other Lewis because I didn’t want to surrender that much shelf space to titles I’m not sure I will ever read again.
I do have a shelf of classic RPGs, and with the purchase of the new bookshelf I now have a comic box of Savage Sword of Conan on that. I am thinking about digging back into these after some time in storage and wanted them close at hand.
Yes, I am aware that these are not technically “books” so I may be committing sacrilege.
Is there a better way to do all this? Almost certainly yes. It’s weird and contradictory. But it works for me. My friends are always impressed by how I can lay my hand on a given title almost immediately, without thinking.
How do you shelf your books? Do you wish to inflict harm on me for my idiosyncratic choices? Leave a comment below.

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