It's been a while since I last did this, but since I was rearranging a bookcase this past weekend, thought I'd pit the first two shelves against each other in a contest to see which is more appealing to the reader. Which shall it be, the first or second shelf and why?
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A couple weeks ago, a commentator on the Unclutterer blog advocated slicing the spines off books, running the pages through a scanner, and then recycling them. Look, no book clutter!
Posts like this really illustrate why that is such a sad idea. I can't say either shelf appeals to me more than the other because I simply like to look at other people's bookcases. Seeing someone's book collection reveals a lot about their personality and opens up some great conversation. And I too love to clean and arrange my books.
Gotta say the first. I like the cluttered look.
It says to me, these are in some kind of order, read date,genre, title, author, Dewey decimal, and they will never look alike. I care about books and reading and not aesthetics.
The bottom seems to say, I bought these from a traveling salesman cuz they would looked good on my shelf.
(even though we all know the second is completely untrue in your case, and you are an amazingly voracious reader)
I like the second one. Untidy shelves irk the little OCD girl inside me and I loved looking at my nicely arranged collections before I started getting lazy and stopped taking care of my bookshelves.
Interesting responses so far. Most of my shelves are like the first photo, in that I don't care about groupings all that much (in Twain's case, other books of his are on other shelves) and that a non-uniformity appeals more to me than others.
Then again, when it comes to certain editions, like the Library of America books pictured in the second photo, I will make an occasional exception to my general rule on not having rigid shelving patterns.
And yes, I like to rearrange shelves every so often according to whim :D
Both have their appeal. I like the very neat look of the second shelf, the way it's organized and clear and easy to find what you're looking for. On the other hand, the slightly more disorganized look of the first shelf brings to mind the idea of greater variety, and it makes me want to stop and take a look at just what's on there instead of passing it by because the contents are obvious at a glance.
I have to go with the first shelf. While I like most of the stuff on the second shelf, the omnibus hardback format bugs some dark aesthetic corner of my soul.
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