Steph asks:
If you haven’t tackled this somewhere – How do you organize your books? How do you feel about the rainbow bookshelves trend that is still going on? (Or the “spines inward/pages outward” trend – maybe this is a deliberately controversial question ;) )
We have a somewhat strong disagreement on this topic in that #1 has taken all the pretty hard cover books out of the bedroom bookcases and put them into the living room and #2 thinks this is heresy.
#1:

two of the bedroom bookcases, mostly humorous SPEC fic in alphabetical order by author or editor’s last name
Otherwise: #1 has all read paperback fiction books put together in alphabetical order in her bedroom bookcases. To-be-read books are sideways in a pile double-stacked in no particular order across two shelves. Our joint comic books have their own shelf in our bedroom. DH doesn’t tend to keep fiction books (he doesn’t reread much), so the ones that we do have are scattered in with my books or DC1’s books, though they used to have their own shelf. Non-fiction books are loosely organized by subject in the living room shelves. Cookbooks are shelved mostly by size (because of the different sizes of books and shelves… this bothers me a little, but there are only 3 shelves) just outside the kitchen.
I try really hard to keep the kids’ fiction chapter books in alphabetical order by author’s last name in their bookcases, but that doesn’t always happen. Kids non-fiction chapter books have their own bookshelf in the hallway (they used to be on separate shelves in their room bookcases, but then we got DC2 a full size bookcase and moved hir smaller case to the hallway), which started out organized by subject but is now a total mess. Spanish books are the bottom shelf of DC2’s bookcase. They also keep all their comic books there which started out organized alphabetically by last author, but are not even shelved nicely anymore. I just give up. Books that DC2 has really outgrown are currently taking the bottom shelves of 3 bookcases in the living room not really organized at all. I should note that I have mild undiagnosed OCD and having organized bookcases give me pleasure while disorganized bookcases give me a little buzz of unhappiness. But I just cannot keep up with the kids being agents of destruction so I have found it healthier for me to just not try to keep up and mentally separate their messed up sections from all books. I tell myself I’m never trying to find their specific non-fiction or comic or picture books so the lack of organization shouldn’t be a problem for me.
Most of my new books are kindle (because they’re cheaper and more portable… in normal times much of my reading gets done on airplanes) and they’re organized by read/unread and then date last read. There’s also a separate thing for children’s books that have been read.
#2:
I have fiction and non-fiction in my bedroom, with various piles of books stacked haphazardly in the living room, kitchen, etc. (And cookbooks in our kitchen.) I have a couple “emergency” books in a cabinet in the bathroom. They just ended up there.
I do not put my books in alphabetical order. They are in an order. For example, there is one case that is all my best-loved and most-personal books. Authors who coauthor books have the coauthored book in between the other two authors. I mix fiction and non-fiction together.
I hate electronic books and have been gradually replacing my cheap kindle books with paperbacks as they come available/get affordable/are gifted from my amazon list.
We’re mostly against sorting books by color (#1 moreso than #2). We’re definitely against shelving them spine inward (though #1’s DC2 seems to favor this. It drives #1 CRAZY.) #2 wants to SEE people’s books out of curiosity. #1 wants to be able to FIND books. Why organize them at all if you’re not going to be able to use the index?
Related: