Hi and welcome to a new feature here on Nite Lite called What Does the Bookworm Say? that I am doing with my friends at The Reader’s Antidote, Books Unbound and The Windy Pages. Each week, we will discuss a new bookish topic. This week’s topic is a bookshelf tour. I am going to give you a little peek into my bookshelves.
Below is the view of most of my book storage, housed in my living room. I moved about two years ago into a much smaller apartment and struggled with how to fit all of my books into my new place. I also agonized on what color bookshelf to get. I decided to go with white, which I thought would make it look more open, and I think it does. These are just the standard Billy bookcases from Ikea. These shelves are not nearly as organized as they were when I first got them. You can see that I started double stacking books. Also, the bookshelf on the far right is all DVDs in the back with books stacked in front of them.
The first shelf we’re going to look at is my mass market paperback and paperback bookcase. When I got these shelves, I was dismayed to find that the pegs for the shelves were too far apart for my liking, leaving me with a lot of wasted space on each shelf. So I used a screwdriver to make new holes. (Note that this is really hard. If you decide to do this, be patient and don’t decide you need to do this in the middle of the night. Wait til morning and buy or borrow and electric drill. You’ll save time and your hands). Most of these are arranged by series where possible though some are just randomly shoved in there.Though the process was not fun, I really like that I have narrow shelves now for these paperbacks. I only did this for the top two shelves because I needed taller shelves for my other paperbacks. You can see them on the bottom there. I actually wish that this was just mass market paperbacks (I have a ton) but then I’d have no place to put my other paperbacks.
Now onto the tall bookcases. The case on the left is all books and they are arrange as follows (from top to bottom) – hardcover lit fic/non-fiction, young adult, comics/graphic novels/picture books, and then art books on the very bottom shelf. My YA collection is quite vast these days and it’s sort of spilled over onto the other shelves.The bookcase on the right has DVDs all in the back. Those are all in alphabetical order pretty much. But you can see that I’ve stacked books in front of those shelves now. I am not showing you the piles I have by my window or inside my TV stand. I don’t really keep books anywhere else besides my living room. I may keep a couple of books on my nightstand, but not usually.
A few random close ups. This is my mass market shelf, protected by a little army of Dunny vinyl toys.
Here is my comics shelf. Most of these are things I need to read or are my favorites. Y: The Last Man takes up a large chunk as does Fables. Seeing this reminds me that I need to read more comics.
Not pictured is my huge bookcase full of knitting/craft books and knitting patterns. I also have a small-ish bookshelf with cookbooks and sewing books in the corner of my kitchen. I had a friend come over last weekend for the first time and the first thing she said to me was “You have a lot of books.” Yes, yes I do.
Thanks for taking a virtual tour of my shelves with me. How do you organize your bookshelves? Genre, alpha, color? I’ve always wanted rainbow shelves but I don’t think I’d be able to find anything. :)
Don’t forget to check out what The Reader’s Antidote, Books Unbound and The Windy Pages have to say about this topic as well. If you have a topic you’d like us to cover, just leave it in the comments below.
