I recently moved to a new apartment, which gave me an excuse to pursue, without guilt, my favorite procrastination activity: reorganizing my bookshelf. It also forced me to go through each and every one of my books and ask hard questions like, am I really ever going to read The Forsyte Saga? (Answer: It’s been up there for 10 years, but maybe? I kept it.) Or: will I ever reread Middlemarch, and if so, will I want to use this yellowed paperback with a taped spine that I got for free off of a stoop? (Answer: No. If a person returns to Middlemarch, they deserve a fresh copy, possibly a reissue with interesting new cover art.)

covercoverOn my old shelves, my books were organized into four broad genres: fiction, nonfiction, plays, and poetry. Fiction was arranged by date published, nonfiction by subject area, and plays and poetry were not in any particular order. On my new shelf, I stuck with my broad genres, and within each one, I kept things simple and organized everything alphabetically. Boring, but effective. But part of the fun of reorganizing your books is considering all your options, so here are 10 organizational strategies for the next time you find yourself in the throes of moving, decluttering, or, if you’re anything like me, procrastinating.

1. Chronologically, by Date Published
As I mentioned above, this is how I have arranged the majority of my books for the past decade. It’s kind of a pretentious way to shelve your collection, and to make it even more pretentious, I got the idea secondhand, from a literary memoir. (I can’t remember whose memoir anymore.) But this method ended up working for me for two reasons: 1) the act of putting my books on the shelf in order helped me to remember history, and to get a better sense of which writers were writing and publishing at the same time, and perhaps influencing one another; and 2) when I add books to my collection, they’re usually brand-new, published recently, and it’s easier to just plunk them down on the end of the shelf rather than finding a place for them alphabetically.

2. By Color
If you have a large number of books, this is an extremely silly way to organize your bookshelf. I know, because I tried it once. I have a good memory for covers and I thought it would be an intuitive way to find my books—and would look pretty, too. What I didn’t realize is that the spines of books are sometimes a different color from the front covers. I found myself spending a lot of time looking for, say, a book I was certain was red, only to discover that its spine was blue. But, if you really love putting things in rainbow order, and you have a small number of books that you know well, this could be a visually striking way to arrange your shelves.

3. Artful Piles
coverI’ve seen this in design magazines and once when I was visiting a fancy Nolita loft, where tall stacks of art books were arranged in uneven piles on a long bench. It reminded me—not unpleasantly—of the scene in The Great Gatsby when Nick Carraway visits Gatsby’s library and discovers that none of the pages of the books have been cut for reading. So if you have a lot of beautiful books that are just for show, artful piles might be the way to go.

4. By Subject/Genre
?If you’re a collector of books on a particular subject, or a big fan of a particular genre, this is probably the most satisfying way to arrange your books. It’s also a good way to organize your books if you don’t have a good memory for titles and authors. I group my nonfiction books by subject because I don’t always remember nonfiction authors and titles as readily as writers of fiction. My subjects are: History, Criticism/Literary Interest, New York City, and Art/Design. (I debated giving memoirs, letters, and journals their own nonfiction subject area but ultimately decided to shelve them with fiction, since in many cases, I’m most interested in the memoirs of authors whose fiction I admire.) A handful of my books don’t fit into any of those categories, and they are stacked up vertically in a miscellaneous pile, near the art books.

5. Geographically
?I’ve never seen anyone organize books this way, but why not? The question is, when you’re organizing geographically, do you go by the author’s place of birth or the particular place that an author is associated with? For example, would Joseph Mitchell be a New York writer or a southern writer? What about Ernest Hemingway? The Midwest, Florida Keys, or Spain? Another option would be to organize by the geographical setting of a particular book, which is somewhat more definitive, though many books are located in multiple locations and/or fictional places. A compromise might be to devote a section on your bookshelf to one particular geographical area.

6. In Order of Importance and/or Goodness
?This could be a good way to start debates among guests. It also could be a good way to kill a rainy afternoon.

7. Secretively
?If you don’t want anyone to know what you’re reading and/or if you don’t care about being able to find your books, you can place them on the shelves so that the spines are facing the wall. This will give your shelves a soothing, monochromatic look. It will also make it difficult for people to borrow books from you.

8. Alphabetically
?This is the obvious, most boring method, but it might be the friendliest, too. Anyone looking for a book in your library will be able to find it. It’s kind of interesting, too, to see who ends up next to each other.

9. Randomly
?You don’t have to organize your books at all. You can shelve them in no particular order, like Pamela Paul, New York Times Book Review editor: “What I like about that disorder is that it allows that element of surprise and serendipity.” Personally, I couldn’t stand to do this at home, but I do enjoy perusing the strange mix of books that you find in beach houses and summer cottages, for the way it always leads to an unexpected choice.

10. Autobiographically
covercoverCredit for this idea must be given to the film High Fidelity (based on the Nick Hornby’s novel by the same name). Post break-up, a lovelorn record store owner, Rob, decides to reorganize his record collection autobiographically. He arranges his records in an order that only he can understand, the key to which are his life experiences and personal obsessions. He explains to a friend, “If I want to find the song “Landslide,” by Fleetwood Mac, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the fall of 1983 pile, but didn’t give it to them for personal reasons.”

It could be argued that every bookshelf, like every piece of writing, is autobiographical, even with its veneer of objective organization, but I admit I can see the nostalgic appeal in consciously organizing my books according to the stages of my life. I’m not sure how I would end up grouping my books, but it would be interesting to think back on all the people—family members, teachers, friends, writers—who have influenced my reading, the classes I’ve taken, the authors I’ve met, the booklists I’ve clipped, and the summers I’ve whiled away. I’d also have to reckon with some of the less flattering aspects of my bookshelf, like the fact that a certain number of books will always remain unread, and another, larger percentage will never be reread because my hope of returning to them “one day” has nothing to do with a desire to reengage with the author, but instead, to return to a certain period of my life, a frame of mind, or even a particular person or place. To shelve autobiographically is to embark on a journey of self-examination, which is why I’m saving it for when I undergo a midlife crisis—or maybe when I move to a bigger apartment.

最近我搬到了一个新公寓，这让我有了一个借口，不带内疚地去追求我最喜欢的拖延症:重新整理书架。本文向您介绍有关《整理书架的十种方法Ten Ways to Organize Your Bookshelf》的内容它还迫使我仔细阅读我的每一本书，并提出一些尖锐的问题，比如，我真的会读福赛特的传奇故事吗?(答案是:它已经在那里待了10年了，也许吧?我保存它。)或者:我是否会重读我的书，如果是这样的话，我还想用这个泛黄的平装本和我从门廊上解放出来的书脊吗?(回答:没有。如果一个人回到了他的书中，他们应该得到一个新的拷贝，可能是一个有趣的新封面艺术的重新发行。)

在我的旧书架上，我的书被分成了四类:小说、非小说、戏剧和诗歌。小说是按日期出版的，非小说的主题区，戏剧和诗歌没有任何特定的顺序。在我的新书架上，我坚持了我的宽泛的风格，在每一种风格中，我都保持简单，按字母顺序组织所有的东西。无聊,但有效。但是，重新整理你的书的乐趣之一是考虑你所有的选择，所以，下面是10种组织策略，下次你发现自己正处于移动，整理，或者，如果你和我一样，拖延的时候。

1、按照时间顺序,按日期出版整理书架

正如我上面提到的，这就是我在过去十年里如何安排我的大部分书的方式。这是一种自命不凡的方式，把你的收藏搁置起来，让它更加自命不凡，我从一本文学回忆录中获得了二手的灵感。(我不记得谁的回忆录了。)但是这种方法最终为我工作，有两个原因:1)把我的书放在书架上的行为帮助我记住了历史，同时也让我更好地了解了哪些作家同时在写作和出版，也许还在影响另一个人;2)当我把书添加到我的藏书时，它们通常是全新的，最近出版了，而且更容易在书架的最后把它们倒在书架上，而不是按字母顺序给它们找一个地方。

2、通过颜色整理书架

如果你有大量的书，这是一种非常愚蠢的组织你的书架的方式。我知道，因为我曾经试过一次。我对封面有很好的记忆，我想这是一种很直观的方式来找到我的书，而且看起来也很漂亮。我没有意识到的是，书的脊骨有时与前面的封面不同。我发现自己花了很多时间寻找，比如说，一本我确定是红色的书，却发现它的脊柱是蓝色的。但是，如果你真的喜欢以彩虹的顺序摆放东西，而且你有少量的书，你很清楚，这可能是摆放你书架的一种视觉上的引人注目的方式。

3、巧妙的桩整理书架

我在设计杂志上看到过这幅画，一次我去参观了一个别致的诺丽塔阁楼，那里的高摞的艺术书籍在长椅子上排列不均匀。当Nick Carraway访问盖茨比的图书馆时，他发现，书中没有任何一页是为了阅读而写的，这让我想起了了不起的盖茨比的场景。所以，如果你有很多漂亮的书只是为了展示，巧妙的书可能是你的选择。

4、主题/类型整理书架

如果你是某个特定主题的图书收藏者，或者是某个流派的忠实粉丝，这可能是最令人满意的安排书籍的方式。如果你对标题和作者没有很好的记忆力，那也是整理你的书的好方法。我把我的非虚构类图书按主题分组，因为我并不总是记得非虚构作家和小说作家的作品。我的主题是:历史，批评/文学兴趣，纽约，艺术/设计。(我曾讨论过给自己的回忆录、信件和杂志写自己的非虚构类主题领域，但最终还是决定把它们搁置起来，因为在很多情况下，我最感兴趣的是那些我欣赏的作家的回忆录。)我的一些书不适合这些类别，它们被垂直地堆放在一堆杂堆里，靠近艺术书籍。

5、在地理上整理书架

我从没见过有人这样组织图书，但为什么不呢?问题是，当你在地理位置上组织时，你是通过作者的出生地还是作者所处的特定位置?例如，约瑟夫米切尔是纽约作家还是南方作家?欧内斯特·海明威呢?美国中西部，佛罗里达群岛，还是西班牙?另一种选择是根据某一本书的地理背景来组织，这是比较确定的，尽管许多书都位于多个地点和/或虚构的地方。一个折衷的办法可能是在你的书架上有一个特定的地理区域。

6、为了重要性和/或善良整理书架

这可能是一种开始在客人之间展开辩论的好方法。这也可能是一个好方法来消磨一个下雨的下午。