If you think your personality doesn’t dictate the organization of your bookshelf, you are severely mistaken. Someone who loves order is never going to let their nightstand and desk overflow in book chaos. Even if you are a person whose never-ending TBR is taking over every square inch of free floorspace in your bedroom, no booklover will ever turn down the chance to buy more, especially if those book suggestions coincide with your organizational patterns. Be it your favourite genre, beautiful cover art, a new author or another version of your favorite read, everyone deserves to know what books would suit their personality and bookshelves best.
1. Chronological Order
You’re a Type A Personality. People who organize their books in chronological order based on publication are people who want to own multiple versions of the same book. You definitely want to own as many classics as humanly possible and are probably in the middle of or starting to collect the gorgeous Penguin Clothbound Classics books.
We love a collection queen, but if you haven’t already bought the clothbound version of Homer’s The Odyssey, then you need to add this beautiful book to your plentiful shelves.
One of the two major ancient Greek epic poems by Homer, The Odyssey follows the mythic hero Odysseus on his journey home after the Trojan War. If you love Greek mythology, you’ll enjoy the adventures and encounters with Gods, demigods, and mythical creatures as he attempts to make his way back to his wife, Penelope. I’ll be honest, this book is not for the faint of heart; it’s divided into 24 books and spans approximately 12,109 lines of dactylic hexameter. Nevertheless, this special edition of one of the oldest works of literature won’t look out of place on a chronologically organized shelf.
2. Aesthetically
Your life is perfect. You’re a Type B personality: A relaxed, low-stressed girlie, with a clean girl aesthetic. You are perfectly okay with organizing your bookshelves based solely on looks and aesthetics.
When you go to a bookstore, you enter without a book in mind, and head straight for the most beautiful cover you can find. I would even say that you make your book purchases based on aesthetic appeal rather than actual content. If you want a book that’s beautiful inside and out with beautiful stories and illustrations, you need The Annotates Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights translated by Yasmine Seale.
This new translation of these famous tales is accompanied by beautiful illustrations and commentary that illuminate the flow of the collection as well as the stories themselves. This edition features treasured original stories as well as later additions, moving the story out of the Victorian era and into modern times. If you loved Disney’s Aladdin as a child, you’ll love the elegant tales and passionate romances that dance across the pages. It’s the perfect addition to an already aesthetically pleasing bookshelf.
3. Alphabetical by Author
If you organize your shelves by author, you definitely have an attachment to buying book series in their entirety. You probably grew up reading Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games, The Mortal Instruments and have stocked your shelves full of fantastical never ending series.
But what this also means is that you need a series that keeps you wanting more. Nothing is worse than buying a saga just to find out you’ve lost interest half way through. If that’s the type of commitment you’re looking for in a book series, I would recommend Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series.
If you like long-lasting book series, then The Dark Tower saga is definitely up your alley. Spanning eight novels, one short story, and a children’s illustrated version, King’s novels are sure to keep the reader engaged and wanting for more. These books not only connect to each other, but play a crucial role in the Stephen King universe, tying into multiple of his other standalone novels. Resembling a classic Clint Eastwood film, the reader follows the Roland Deschain as a gunslinging peacekeeper through the series King considers his magnum opus. The perfect addition for a series lover.
4. Alphabetical by Title
Unlike series lovers who organize their books by author, if you organize your books alphabetically by title, you enjoy standalone novels. Rather than diving into a long-lasting series, you enjoy those special books that can impact you after just one read. You definitely own that viral scratch off poster with “100 books to read before you die” and your young and healthy self is already half way through it.
If you’re looking for a truly impactful and heartbreaking novel to add to your shelves, I would 100% recommend Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.
I recommend this book to everyone I meet. It’s the perfect book for when you need to feel an emotional connection with a character from the first page. The book follows Celie through her life as a poor southern African American woman in the early 1900s. It’s written in the form of a series of letters between Celie, her sister Nettie, her best friend Shug, and God, bringing the reader close to Celie and the raw emotions.
The content is graphic, making the story more chilling and impactful. Because of this, the book has been a frequent target of censors and is one of the most frequently challenged books in the United States. Nevertheless, Alice Walker won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction with this striking book that everyone should read at least once in their lives.
5. By Genre
You definitely consider your book collection a personal library. You either want to work in a bookstore, or you already do. Either way, organizing your books by genre will allow you to live out your organized bookstore lover life.
In any case, you’re like me and obsess with genre cataloguing your books, and you’re also a hopeless romantic. We’re all obsessed with living our own bookstore fantasies– going to coffee shops to read and wait for our inevitable meet-cute with a dashing stranger. If this is the case, you’ll absolutely love With Love from London by Sarah Jio.
If we can’t find that dashing, book-loving stranger in reality, we can definitely find it in books. Jio’s story is perfect for a hopeless romantic obsessed with one day owning a bookstore. Valentina returns to her home of London to inherit her estranged mother’s bookstore. Going through a messy divorce, she finds herself thrusted into a new reality filled with family secrets, a new love interest, and the biggest challenges she’s ever faced.
6. Towers and Piles
Everyone knows that the people who don’t have the time to physically organize their books onto shelves is someone who’s TBR is longer than the Nile. You’re on Booktok and are definitely an impulse buyer when it comes to books. Nevertheless, you are the person everyone goes to for book recommendation and you never gate-keep a five-star read.
It’s hard to recommend books for you because you’re usually the one telling people which ones they need to buy. You also don’t need new recommendations because you have yet to make a dent in your TBR. But if you’re truly desperate, a book that is currently so underrated is Matt Haig‘s How to Stop Time.
This book is truly underrated by social media and book influencers. Tom Hazard is a man who’s destined to live for 400 years, aging slow enough to making him young for centuries. Not only is this an easy read, but it fascinates readers with new concepts on time and humanity. He interacts with historical figures, like Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Tom allows the reader to escape reality and dive into the midst of the 16th century. A love story that spans across centuries, this book will leave you wondering how you didn’t already own it.
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