How do you arrange the books on your bookshelf?

My husband made these lovely shelves for me and he wanted to film me putting my books onto them, as he’s starting a YouTube channel.

But I suddenly felt weirdly protective of how I decide where the books are going to go.

Maybe it’s because I can’t explain it, other than the perhaps obvious (genres together).

They are definitely not alphabetical, or ordered by colour.

I just know where they are supposed to go, within each genre, intuitively.

Also, I have an entire section - cross-genre - devoted to a particular author, Samuel Beckett.

I wrote two dissertations about him at university and then properly stopped reading books by men.

It was the feminist module that got me. Highlighted the male-domination of the literary canon.

But I keep my Beckett books, all the same.

(And I have a strong ‘feminist literature’ section.)

I’m extremely controlling about the books that will go on these shelves.

The ones you can see up there now have been quickly put in as placeholders, as I didn’t want to be filmed.

I have several boxes of books that still need to be unpacked.

And then, the ordering begins.

Are you as pedantic as me, or more relaxed about bookshelves?