Virtual Tour Of My Bookshelves

Back in January, I read Money Saving Mom's post with her tour of her bookshelves (and it was linked up to a whole bunch of other ones).  Since both Jesse and I love to read, and we're trying to instill that in our children, it seemed like a fun idea, but I didn't get around to it.  Still, I'd love to show you (and see yours!)

Here's our bookshelf.  Yes, we only have one.  Jesse has two more big shelves and one smaller shelf of theological and sociology books in his church office, but this is all we have at our house.

The top two shelves, plus the top of the bookcase, are home to our fiction, most of which was mine, but a few are from Jesse as well.  They are in alphabetical order by author, because I am OCD and that's what makes the most sense to me.

I have really culled this down over the past two moves.  I got rid of most of the "classics" that I could find for free on my Kindle, since I still have access to them if I want to read them, but now they don't take up space.

This is also where we have a bunch of little decorative items.  Those are a little crowded for my tastes, but with three little kids, they're not safe on the bottom shelves right now.

The next two shelves are kids' books.  These are actually getting really full, to the point that we might need to purge some soon!  They are in no particular order, except that generally the bigger ones go on the lower shelf because it's taller.  As long as the books make it back on the shelf, I'm happy.

Finally, the bottom shelf has some non-fiction, devotions, pregnancy books, baby books, and photo albums.  We don't have a lot of any of these, so they're all mixed together on the bottom.

I also have a few hundred books on my Kindle, which are organized into topical headings like "Parenting", "Food/Cookbooks", and "Money".  I'm trying to get better at reading the ones I have, although I would say I probably pick up 3-5 free ones each month that look interesting.  I hardly ever pay for ebooks unless I know I'm going to read them though.

Here's the thing about books.  I used to believe that A) people actually paid attention to the books on my shelves, and B) that they formed an opinion about me based on those books, so I tried to have a large collection of what I felt were "impressive" books, most of which I had not read.  At least I got them at the used book store, so they didn't cost as much, but I finally realized that no one judges me by my books.  So now I just have books that I've really enjoyed, as well as some that I really do want to read at some point.