As far as I’m concerned, you can display your books however you like, provided you’re not one of those people who arranges books by color. I hate that. It’s disrespectful to the book and makes you look like the sort of superficial twit who quite literally judges a book by its cover.
I’ve divided my own library into genres: Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Theater, Travel, and Reference. The books in each section are lined up according to differing criteria.
Poetry is in chronological order by the author’s birth date. If I have more than one volume by the same author, those works appear in that poet’s slot in the order of each book’s release date. Anthologies and other multiauthor works go in order of release date at the end of the section.
Theater is arranged similarly, with plays in rough chronological order. If I have more than one play by the same writer, all of that writer’s scripts are grouped together, by date of first performance, in the first-performance-date slot of whichever of that writer’s plays I like best. Drama history, theory, and practice go in order of release date at the end of the section.
Travel books are organized in the order I first visited the destination covered in each volume. Reference books are positioned for ease of access, so that the sources I consult most are closest to my desk. Naturally, the AP Stylebook gets pride of place.
Nonfiction is the only section broken down into thematic subgenres: memoirs, illustrated works, essays, history, and arts criticism. Within each subgenre, books are ordered by release date. If I have more than one book by the same author, all of that writer’s works are grouped together in the slot of whichever of that writer’s books I like best.
Books in my favorite section, Fiction, are arranged by the author’s home country. The nations represented are the United States, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, India, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Within each country’s subsection, books are grouped in rough chronological order by release date; if I have more than one book by the same author, all of that writer’s books appear together in the release-date slot of whichever of that writer’s books I like best.
I agree with you that some parts of the globe are woefully underrepresented.
I usually buy the books I read and then donate them to a nearby Little Free Library when I’m finished, keeping only select faves for my permanent collection. Going to the public library would be more economical, but economics was never my strong suit. My favorite store is Porter Square Books in Cambridge.
I suppose I’d describe my reading tastes as broad. For whatever reason, this has been the case ever since I got into reading back in elementary school. To my parents’ credit, they believed in letting me read pretty much anything, even though they were heavy-duty evangelicals. Then, as now, there were members of that Focus on the Family crowd who were like, “How dare the public library distribute smut like Goosebumps and Sweet Valley High??”
But my parents’ stance, on that moral matter at least, was basically, “Oh, puh-lease.”
And I’d say they got that one right. Banning books is as bad as—or even worse than!—displaying them in your living room in a ROYGBIV formation like an idiot.
In fact, everyone should follow my parents’ pro-book example and just be glad your kid is reading anything—yes, even if it was written by the gutter-minded Judy Blume.
After all, I read everything I could get my hands on and look how I turned out.
Course, I turned out queer, which I guess was Focus on the Family’s concern all along. But still!
Indirect Objects 