How Do You Organize 3,000 Books? Touring My Personal Library
A Recent Renovation Means It’s Time to Reorganize (and Purge)
My wife and I recently renovated our house. Late last year we discovered we had a mold problem beneath the floors and in a some outer walls. All I can say is that you never want to hire an “indoor biologist”—unless, of course, you need to.
Since the remediation process meant tearing up the place, we would have to temporarily move out and rebuild the damaged areas of the house. Turning lemons into lemon meringue pie, we decided to do some renovations. Most of the upgrades won’t concern us here, but one most certainly will: the library, and I’d love to show it to you.
Working out of Boxes
We moved out of our house in December. When we left, I took about ten boxes of books with me so I could continue working on my own upcoming book. I successfully updated the proposal and made progress on the manuscript, and my agent secured me a book deal with Prometheus—all while working out of those boxes. Not too shabby.
I figured I could write the entire book like that if necessary. But I sure didn’t want to, especially since my home library was getting a much-needed expansion during the renovation. Truth is I was sometimes working out of boxes at home too. The new configuration would add more room and suit my needs like nothing else.
Work on the renovation crawled, however, reminding me of this quip from Kevin Kelly:
When you have 90% of a large project completed, finishing the final details will take another 90%. Houses . . . are famous for having two 90%s.
I can confirm. Thankfully, we’re now finally back under our own roof, and that means I had the recent joy of putting my library back together.
The Challenge
Let met explain the scope of the project. Upon my most recent count, I had about 3,200 books, many still in boxes. I’ve got two floor-to-ceiling built-ins in my study covering two walls and a new set along one wall at the top of the stairs.
Along with these I’ve got an antique small case to store spiritual books that doubles as our family altar (books in the case, icons on the wall above) and another small built-in near the kitchen that holds cookbooks and chapter books to read to our youngest. But with one wall totally open and two full walls that needed reorganization, how would I arrange the books?
The task proved tricky along a few dimensions.
First, the overall structure. A library needs a conceptual scheme to hold it together. That’s all the Dewey Decimal System is, though one designed to as generic and all-purpose as possible. I am, on the other hand, highly particular and have highly particular purposes. I also have a lot of books in terms of genre and type: history of various ages, literature, psychology, business, politics, policy, religion, biography, memoir, the arts, and more. What’s more, my library is always growing and I’m particularly interested in expanding my fiction, especially classic novels.
The solution? I decided to merge a few categories and organize them all chronologically. This is a wonderful way to contextualize books with historical content or importance. I’ve done it for years but failed to follow the scheme in the most recent iteration of this space. I took everything down and started over.
Beginning on the first bank of shelves when you enter the study, I started with several overview volumes that encompass long periods, such as Copleston‘s multivolume History of Philosophy and Norman Davies’s single-volume histories of Europe and the British Isles, after which I began putting up books related to the ancient world, everything from copies of Gilgamesh and Homer to modern treatments of the various regions and periods.
From there, I moved into the second-temple Judaism, early Christianity, and the transition to the medieval world. Augustine and Cassiodorus share space with modern writers such as historian Peter Brown and sociologist Rodney Stark, all contextually relevant to each other.
The medieval world comes next, then the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment on into the modern era, more or less. Montaigne and John Calvin share space with Carlos Eire and Brad Gregory. Meanwhile, book history—a particular interest of mine and the subject of my own book—is spread throughout as appropriate with some anachronistic volumes crammed around Gutenberg’s appearance in the timeline.
Second, the specific placement. My chronological array covers one wall. What about the other two and the individual cases? What would go where, and based on what criteria? My library is a working library, so I decided to keep the books I’m using for projects closest to hand. That meant, along with the history, I would need both literature and a mix of psychology, neuroscience, and so-called “big idea” books nearby.
I could afford to move politics, policy, biography and memoir (outside of those kept with history) upstairs along with some psychology, the arts, and others. I pass this shelf several times a day so it’s no burden to run upstairs for a copy of something if I need it.
Third, the actual logistics. This was trickiest part of the challenge. A scheme is one thing, reality another. Ask any U.S. president, parent, business person, or New Year’s resolution-maker. “Everyone has a plan,” said that great philosopher and pugilist Mike Tyson, “until they get punched in the face.”
Would my plan work, or would my books punch me in the face?
Was there space? Could I slot everything in where I thought it should go? No. It took me a couple days to figure it out, but here’s where I landed. I started by opening all the boxes and just getting reacquainted with what was inside. Then I began making piles and shifting everything around, estimating the amount of space required.
Order emerges from real conditions, not imagined futures (something home librarians understand better than politicians). A plan is just way to get started, a direction to point, but it’s not the final word. Limits inform the organization. Within the dual constraints of my scheme and my shelves, I eventually landed on the final layout.
The Process
The first shelf I settled on was the family altar. I figured it was both the most important and the easiest to put in order. It’s a small case that houses patristics, theology, and devotional reading.
If I were being consistent, I could have placed most of these on the chronological wall given their historical relevance, but (a) the wall couldn’t absorb the influx and (b) I’d lose the ease of stopping as I pass to and from our bedroom for a word from the Desert Fathers or an edifying moment with Gregory of Nyssa.
From there I loaded up the kitchen bookcase (not shown) and my daughter’s case of kids’ books (also not shown). I then retrieved a dozen boxes from an upstairs closet, knowing the majority of those would end up on the new built-in there.
Our house had a conveniently large landing at the top of the stairs, so in the renovation we decided to install another set of shelves there.
On the new shelves I placed a lot of books I don’t often need these days (e.g., politics, economics, criminal justice) along with some I do (African American studies and a smattering of science and mostly modern biography). Again, a lot of these could fill my chronological wall, but I’d need a bigger wall.
The difficulty here was finding the right placement and then hustling up and down the stairs, moving books around until I found an equilibrium I could work with—and then slotting additional books as I uncovered them out of place downstairs or in boxes. It seemed like they just kept multiplying.
What became apparent as I worked was that, despite the expansion, I still had more books than space. “So many books, so little room,” to paraphrase Frank Zappa.
As mentioned, I had about 3,200 volumes. That meant I had to cull a bunch. I have some general guidelines I follow for that, and I successfully followed them here. I took me about three days, but I culled six and a half boxes of books in all. Since some of those will still be needed for work, I was able to remove them to the office. Others I foisted on a couple of welcoming homes.
Despite how it might appear to some, I’m not a collector. Real collectors hold onto books. Books come and go as my need or curiosity waxes and wanes, which serves as a segue to the last significant portion of the library—the shelves reserved for literature.
I’ve always read fiction, though not tons and not with sustained effort. Consequently, I’ve never built a significant collection of fiction or literary nonfiction. I’ll read a novel and then when culling is required make space by letting it go. The world is full of tradeoffs, and I rarely regret those decisions. But here’s an instance where I wish I’d held onto more.
I went through a period more than a decade ago where I read a bunch of Walker Percy, I read A Confederacy of Dunces, and I blitzed a pile of Mario Vargas Llosa and much else besides. But you’d barely know it from the current state of my shelves. I’ve let so many of those copies go—and plenty more since then.
That’s a pity because in the last couple of years classic literature has really come alive for me, and I see myself investing far more time and money here in the future. Then again, nothing makes me happier than a new project, and I do know how to make more room.
And that’s probably something worth noting about a personal library, maybe the most important thing: It’s never fully organized because it’s never fully done. A personal library is a permanent work in progress with all the discovery, rediscovery, and joy that implies.
With a home library, the final 90% is never complete. It’s just an open invitation for more attention and curation.
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My sweet wife is drooling over the pictures of your shelves in a way she never has a picture of me!
I love this topic and drool over your shelves. I haven't counted my books recently but I had over 3,000 books several years ago and have added many books since. But my youngest is 8 years old and I'm starting to purge children's books. Many of my shelves are filled with books I've used to homeschool my six children, so in a few years, those too will be purged. I'm rather excited to imagine the transformation my home library will undergo. I love that a home library isn't a static thing but reflects both the past, present, and future, both of myself and my children.
Gina