Bookshelf Tour

It is time for an extensive bookshelf tour! I’ve been wanting to make one of these for a while but never had the time to take all the photos, so I put it off.

My bookshelf is changing constantly as I get more books and give others away (they usually go to my English teacher). By the end of the month, my shelf will probably look different.

I still wanted to do this post, though. I believe that you can learn a lot about a person by what’s on their bookshelf. The books they keep and cherish can say something about them.

I have a pretty simple bookshelf. I don’t have a lot of space in my room, so it’s taller than it is long and doesn’t have a lot of things on it. I admire people who organize their bookshelves in aesthetically pleasing ways and have a bunch of cute bookish knickknacks, but it doesn’t work very well with my bookshelf. The only thing I have on my shelf is the time turner necklace that’s hanging on the top right.

At the time that I’m writing this, I have 151 books. I arrange all of them by the author’s last name in alphabetical order. Multiple titles by the same author are organized alphabetically, while series go in order.

I don’t have a bunch of space on my shelves, so the books I do keep are special. I either loved them or they hold a certain meaning to me or both. I periodically do book purges and give them to either my old school or my current English teacher who always love to grow her book collection for the classroom.

As many of you know, I love graphs. I have a spreadsheet with all of the books that I own, and I made graphs for them. So, if you want some specifics on the books I have, here are the specific genres and age groups:

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Top Shelf

I feel like my top shelf is my most vibrant shelf, with the most colors on the spines of books. That’s probably because of all the series with the different colored covers.

One thing that I find extremely satisfying is when all the books in a series are the same cover design and format, and they’re all lined up next to each other. My collection of The Shadow and Bone Trilogy makes me so happy, while my collection of the Graceling Realm series makes me . . . less than ecstatic. Graceling is one cover version, Fire and Bitterblue are another, and Winterkeep and Seasparrow (on my TBR shelf) are yet another design. Plus, Winterkeep and Seasparrow are hardcovers, while the others are paperback, so the heights of the books are different too.

2nd Shelf

I am mildly annoyed that The Burning God doesn’t fit on the end so that The Poppy War trilogy can all be on one shelf. But it didn’t work out that way. Maybe when I do a book purge, the whole series will be together then.

3rd Shelf

I honestly don’t have much to say about this shelf. Some of the books on this shelf I’ve had for forever, like In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson and Island of the Blue Dolphins. Others, like Stars and Smoke, are pretty recent additions. It’s always so satisfying to add a book to the shelf and see how it looks with the others.

4th Shelf

I find it funny that half of this shelf is just Rick Riordan books. He’s definitely the author I have the most books from, with 14. My Rick Riordan collection consists of:

• All five of the original series
• The Sun and the Star (it’s on my TBR shelf)
• Camp Half-Blood Confidential
• PJO: The Ultimate Guide
• The Demigod Files
• The Burning Maze and The Tyrant’s Tomb (The Trials of Apollo #3 and #4)
• The Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase #3)
• Hotel Valhalla: Guide to the Norse Worlds

I also have Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods, the one with all the stories about the gods, but it’s in my closet for some reason and not on my shelf.

I also have a pretty large Alice Oseman collection, with 4 of the Heartstopper volumes (I ordered the 5th a little while ago!), The Heartstopper Yearbook, Nick and Charlie, and Loveless, totaling 7 (and it will soon be 8).

Bottom Shelf

Yes, The Book Thief is on top of some other books. It unfortunately does not fit at the end. My bottom shelf consists of my Trenton Lee Stewart collection, with all The Mysterious Benedict Society books, plus the puzzle book. Stewart is third in my list of “most books by one author,” with 6 books.

I also have an incredibly old copy of Charlotte’s Web, which was one of my parent’s when they were a kid. The spine is falling off, as you can see, but I still keep it there.

Randomish Shelf

This is the shelf where I have books that aren’t novels. These are mostly informational books, and I haven’t read most of them. The first one is Astroquizzical by Jillian Scudder, which answers a bunch of questions about space. Then I have three books that all coincidentally are about Asian Americans or Asian topics. I’ve read the second one; I read it for an English project I did last year. Then there’s a book about cars that my mom wanted to look through, but I didn’t end up doing that. And then I have some books about writing. I’ve looked through Spilling Ink before, and I like it, since it’s aimed at young writers.

I also have some of my childhood favorites down here as well since I was running out of room for other books on my main shelf. They’re books I read when I was a lot younger, in elementary school.

TBR Shelf

My TBR shelf has no organization; I just add the books I get on to the end. I don’t usually have this many books on my TBR shelf at once, but they’re from numerous trips to the bookstore and gifts I’ve received. The one I’m most excited about is Babel, but it’s a bit intimidating. It seems like it will be a dense read, and I want to make sure I take my time with it.

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How do you organize your bookshelf?
Do you know how many books you own?