How I Sort My Bookshelves

A Newsletter Post

The “To-Read” Shelf

Behold! My “To-Read” bookshelf:

These are all unread books. Shortest spines on the upper left, tallest spines on the lower right. Some attempt is made to then sort by cover width, so that the books get increasingly recessed as they move left and increasingly protrude as they move right.

I then go back and forth, reading between the smallest book on the upper left and the largest book on the lower right. That way I won’t be holding off the big long reads while iterating through dozens of small books, but I won’t get bogged down in large book after large book and end up with a huge stack of small books.

As I get new books, I compare their spine tallness, sliding them along until they’re with equally tall books. Then I put them at the inner-most point of the books of their height. That way,