My World: Bookshelf Ordering

Given that this is my personal blog, I occasionally like to write posts which give you, dear reader, an insight into my internal world. This is such a post.

What I am currently wrestling with is… how to order books on my bookshelves. (I’m not promising that you’ll be enthralled by this insight into my mind…)

Let me explain: I think people who need to own a variety of Bible commentaries are in a relatively unique position, book-wise: commentaries come in lots of different series. These series generally have a consistent design theme, so in the picture above (which is a picture of one of my shelves in my study) you can see the orange covers (Bible Speaks Today), and the white/blue covers (Pillar New Testament Commentary).

The issue I have is… do I order books by series, or do I order books by the order of books in the Bible? Which should take priority? If I group the books by the book of the Bible they’re on, it will make it easier to find commentaries on a particular book – but it won’t look as nice. I like the satisfaction of seeing a shelf with nice and neat rows of books, not all messed up!

Someone please, tell me I’m not going mad here!

Hi, my name is Phill, and I’m slightly obsessive-compulsive…


Comments

6 responses to “My World: Bookshelf Ordering”

  1. I know how you feel! I’ve chosen to order by book, rather than series, as I think in the long term this’ll save lots of time. But it doesn’t look anything like as nice…

    1. Thanks Dom, that makes me feel so much better! At the moment I can kind of get away with it because I don’t have that many commentaries (and even fewer where I have two commentaries on one book of the Bible). But I think at some point I’m going to have to make the step of ordering by book 🙁

  2. I vote for by series-whilst my desk might be a mess (see earlier tweet) my bookcases look very pretty!

    1. Glad to hear someone else has gone the same way as me! 🙂

  3. Mark Macklin avatar
    Mark Macklin

    Go by books of the Bible. If you lose a book it won’t look so bad on that set. You know also understand that not every set is worth having all the Volumes. Go for the best writers on each Bible book.

    1. Thanks Mark, I think this is the decision I’ve (reluctantly) come to! One good thing about being at college is that I can ‘try out’ commentaries from the library before buying, so quite a few of the ones I’ve bought so far I’ve been able to confirm are good before! 🙂

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