Isn’t it sad, that books are sold as some kind of stylish detail, instead to sell them for reading them?
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Well, I suppose it’s better than chucking them into a landfill. In fairness, The Strand does do a brisk trade in new and used books sold to actual readers. In addition to the more valuable volumes that are shelved inside they also have thousands of $1 and $2 used books for sale on racks outside the store, and there are always people rifling through them looking for something that appeals.
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Min is in height order as well.
I did the color once, loved it, and didn’t care that my guest wasn’t amused that the authors or titles were not organized to their liking. I only have about 300 hardbound, so looking for the title isn’t difficult.
The Strand is also kind to not wealthy graduate students who need older scholarly editions
I love organising books by colour. It actually makes sense psychologically, as we often can remember a book by its cover (visual memories can be stronger than verbal memories, e.g. the name of an author), so unless the spine is a different colour to the front cover (surprisingly common), it’s a good way to navigate. Children’s book collections are also often arranged by colour, because even if children can read their verbal memories are much weaker than their visual/colour memories in that stage of life (and of course younger children can’t read yet so need a different way to navigate).
My books are arranged in a ridiculous system currently. On a whim last year I decided to group them by topic, then subgroup them by colour within that topic, except where an author had written multiple titles within the same group with different spine colours, in which case they got grouped together, or where there were multiple books with different spine colours about the same person, in which case they got grouped together. Just in case that system wasn’t stupid enough, I went ridiculously specific with my topics so some end up only filling half a shelf (e.g. “Ancient Rome” would’ve been a sensible category, but I actually went with “Romans”, “Stoics”, “Books about Rome” all as separate groups). The result is chaos, you can’t tell that they are arranged by colour in their tiny little groups, and only I can now navigate my shelves. Even I am now struggling to work out what some groups are.
I have for the last few months been eyeing up my shelves and wondering whether to stop being an insane person and put them in a new system, but it’s like a weekend’s work and it’s a waste of a summer weekend. For my next system I’m torn between colour (but I don’t like splitting up authors or topics), A-Z the whole lot by author (but I don’t like splitting up topics) or topics (but do I A-Z by author? What about subtopics? That’s the mess I made this time round!).
As a student I worked for years in a book shop. It’s probably good that I don’t any more. (I love my career, but part of me still considers this the best job I ever had.)
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I put my list in the Apple Books “Want to Read” list. This usually gives me a sample to see if I really do want to read it. I usually borrow them from the library rather than buy them, but it’s a good place to keep a list.
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I use an app called Reading List. It tracks what you’re reading, what you’ve read, and what you want to read. It’s really easy to add books ant to switch between your lists.
I’m using the free version, but the developer offer a pro version for $9.99 per year.
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Great idea. 
I just add them into Things 3.
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I have a slightly different question now, which is: do you note why a book has been added to your list?
Some of you have mentioned that you do, and I’m wondering how common this is.
I don’t - over the years I just found it to be an unnecessary piece of admin and I couldn’t be bothered. However, the trade-off is that I have weird books on my list, many from many years ago, that I must have added for a reason, which I now don’t remember.
Book Tracker / Book Track (it’s the same app and appears to be using two names), which I mentioned above I’m settling in with quite nicely, has a notes field for each book, so for a couple of books I’ve now added a reason why they’re on my list. I don’t know if I will keep that up even though I can see the value in it.
In a similar vein I guess, I recently added a comments column to the spreadsheet where I record what I’ve read, so that I can add a sentence about the book. I store book notes somewhere else when applicable (DevonThink), but I thought future me might appreciate seeing a one sentence comment next to an entry. I’m being more consistent with this than adding notes to the TBR list.
My books to read is currently a wish list in Amazon for kindle books, 10 notes in Obsidian with books to get by genre and a stack of paper boks currently about 2.5 ft high of ones I haven’t gotten to yet.
Mine are simple. Genre and topics. Science Fiction is arranged alphabetically by author, then within an author by sequence in the time of the stories contained or alphabetical by title or series. Within larger groups I keep books in order by size so I get maximum density in the bookcases.For example 2 of the downstairs bookcases are entirely farming and sheep books. The shelves are labeled with things like Sheep Wool Fencing another shelf is Sheep Poultry Genetics I have several for Welsh Ag, Scottish Ag, and English Ag historical books. I have map of what categories are in each shelf of all 32 built in bookcases. I can usually go right to the book I want without any problems. If that fails I can look it up. I have all the books currently in Bookpedia and as I get and use one I add a note for it in Obsidian along with the location and update Bookpedia with the location as well.
Sometimes but rarely. What I do track is when I started and finished a book and a few notes about it.
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Not why as much as who recommended a book, or where it was cited.
I have a slightly different question now, which is: do you note why a book has been added to your list?
I’ve come to do this more and more. I’ve tracked my books in LibraryThing for more than a decade, and it’s a wealth of information for me. When I look back at the books I added at the beginning, the information I added to them—primarily in the form of tags—isn’t so informative, and why I may have added a book isn’t always clear. One particular tag I use now is a source of recommendation; in particular, when certain individuals recommend a book to me, I add that information in the form of a tag (‘recommended by…’) and it’s a meaningful way for me to understand why I added the book. It’s also interesting to see when more than one person has recommended the same book. There are other/additional ways to address the ‘why’ question, but keeping track of the source of recommendation can be a useful one.
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I mentioned Reading List earlier. It has a Notes field, which I use to capture the reason I wanted to read the book - or who recommended it.
I also use Trello for this. All the “metadata” about the book can be added inside the card. Create as many boards as you want, one for each year for example, and inside two simple lists with “want to read” and “completed”.
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What an interesting use of Trello! We don’t talk about Trello much in the forum (in my own case it’s because I use it for work and intensely dislike that because it doesn’t suit me) but I wonder how many of folks are using it voluntarily, and what they do with it!
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I like that you’re using tags, I hadn’t thought of that! A little question that has been niggling me has been around the search-ability of notes in various book apps, but using tags, at least for key sources of recommendations, would give you the same function. Because I don’t track it currently I can’t actually see this, but I know I make a note of book recommendations from some sources more than others. It would’ve been good to be able to gather those titles together and maybe prioritise them if I know the source is reliable.
It’s a pretty fun tool, I can’t see myself not using it. I can use it with friends or family that do not have apple devices and that’s a win.
How do you track re-reading a book? Do you keep count of how many times that you have read it and when?
I’m starting to add that data in my Obsidian notes. I’ve only done a few notes with it just as a line in the note. I’m thinking of going back and doing more with dataview to add some more of the metrics into the YAML in my book note and update the ones I have done. Still undecided at this time.
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