Special guest on the blog today! You might know my sister from Ash from her contributions to Family Reads. While we have some overlap in our taste in books, Ash has a different variety of books and way of organizing them. I love the aesthetic of her bookcases. So, here is a bookshelf tour by someone who is a book lover but not a book blogger. Regular text is my sister speaking, italics are my editorial comments 😛
I have two bookcases – a narrower one for fiction and a wider one for nonfiction. Both are white Billy bookcases from IKEA. The top shelf of the fiction bookcase holds my graphic novels and comics. Fables is my all time favourite; I own the entire series. Up there, I also have a six part series of single issue Batman Comics, and there’s Low and Wake (which we read for Family Reads once upon a time).
For the most part, the next shelf features my favourite trilogies. (Let’s just pretend The Hunger Games is not there – the first one was great but by the time you get to Mockingjay it’s like this lady didn’t know what she was doing and thought she’d be oh so creative by killing everyone so The Hunger Games yes, is a favourite, but not the entire trilogy.) Why are all my trilogies the same colours (red, yellow/orange, blue)? I don’t know. But it looks dope. I’m sure there’s some psychology behind this colour scheme. Book world, educate me. (10 minutes later: Maybe it’s because they’re the primary colours…what are the primary colours? Those are. That’s totally why.) Lots of people die in all these books so maybe that’s what it is. They’re all also fantasy/scifi or ‘spec fic’ if we’re gonna be real general about it. I organized them by author.
For the most part, the next shelf contains demoted trilogies or series that are more than three books. Point of clarification: I LOVE the Noughts & Crosses series. It is not a demoted trilogy. I just don’t own the fourth book. Therefore it doesn’t go on the trilogy book cos it’s not a trilogy. Even though it appears as a trilogy. Cos I don’t own the fourth book. That’s why it’s first on the shelf. There is also one stand alone book on this shelf It goes in the middle because it’s important. It is too good for the stand alone shelf but it cannot go on the fave trilogies shelf because it is a stand alone. This shelf is also organized by author.
Then I decided to change it up because I like to mess with my own mind: I organized this shelf by colour. (I was with Ash when she reorganized this bookcase. It used to be all by colour so this shelf. She was too stressed about completely letting go of colour coordination, so this shelf is a bit of an homage to that.) JG bobblehead lives in front of the white book because they make him stand out. Sidenote: I own two copies of Borne (another Family Reads selection!) because I bought on the day it came out and my sister gave me one that Vandermeer signed because she’s dope as heck.
Please note that I hate hardcovers. The fact that here are three hardcovers on this shelf irks me. For people who will ask why I have these hardcovers: 1) they’re signed or 2) I couldn’t wait for the paperback. #2 only applies to TATWD. Oh wait TATWD is also signed anyway.
The next shelf is my TBR plus Jack of Fables because he doesn’t fit on the top shelf (sorry dude). I’m missing the last book which irks me but TBH I don’t care because he’s kind of a douche. This shelf also has two really old books that my friend was going to get rid of but we got upset about getting rid of old books so somehow they are now on my shelf.
The last shelf is children’s books and childhood faves because I’m so old, you know. (She’s younger than me.) I’m upset that I haven’t finished the Alex Rider series. If ya’ll need a good teen spy, totally no thought power needed to read, I 10/10 recommend Alex Rider. I actually have some really intense books on that shelf. I was a depressing child.
Sidenote: I really recommend Double Helix. There’s one part at the end of that book which really stuck with me and won’t go away. I kept it even though it got rained on cos it made such an impression on me. This book explains why I love Orphan Black so much. Shout to picture book Tuck in the Pool, because he’s a pig in a pool and he was scared (I was a fish as a child, btw).
I kept the non-fiction case organized by colour because it’s pretty and because I love myself in this corner of my room. It’s also slightly more of a ‘display’ shelf. It has what I say will be my coffee table books but realistically they won’t all go on my coffee table.
Shoutout to Have a Little Pun and Bread and a Dog. The bookcase is being eaten alive by the plant library. Shoutout to my ivy that needs water. Shoutout to the one self-help book on this non-fiction shelf, The Defining Decade. Shoutout to Sarah Kay, my favourite poet ever, who is actually so incredible. Shoutout to the cutie pic of my dad my sister and me. Shoutout to the sheeps my sister brought me from New Zealand and Ireland (note the purple sheep is WITH THE PURPLE BOOKS). Shoutout to my adult seek and find book, Houseplants and Hot Sauce (if anyone wants a fun time).
Hope you enjoyed that tour! Ash’s shelves are quite different from my own (I shard a tour of my own bookshelves just before I moved back in August 2017. It’s organized the same nowadays, just with more books crammed in :P). How do you organize your books? Do you ever mix them up?
I love the idea of separating fiction from nonfiction. I don’t have much of a shelf at home, I feel kind of anxious with having too many so I don’t buy a lot of books and give away most that I receive once I’ve read them (though I still have many I haven’t read that sit on the shelf threateningly). But I think I’d prefer to keep nonfiction around, since I’m more likely to revisit those – I very, very rarely reread fiction books (hence wanting to give them away because I don’t really have a use for them).
Very cool shelves, I’m quite envious of having bookshelves. Mine are in a cubby-hole arranged by author and series, with a few baskets overflowing. I’m also envious of how you have family reads! I used to be able to read with the kiddo and we shared a passion for similar genres, but the times are changing. Now we share more recommendations with one another. I guess it’s why I so enjoyed the Cybils reading and discussions.