Jeri Coppola's bookshelves

An oh-too-cutesy column in The Guardian about how to arrange books on your bookshelves (“Old Penguins … can be bought by the yard at most secondhand bookshops, and are a very easy way of acquiring instant intellectual credibility”) inspires … well, a more interesting question: How do people who aren’t so arch actually arrange the books on their shelves? Alphabetically by — what, author? Title? Subject? Publisher? In fiction and nonfiction sections?

Or in other ways?

Do you segregate hardcover from paperback? Foreign fiction from domestic? Picture books from texts?

The curator of the Melville House gallery, Jeri Coppola, arranges her books by the color of the cover. Crazy, you say? Actually, it’s rather beautiful, as the photo at the right shows.

Any other interesting notions on this out there? Write in and let us know.