Oh yeah, I have lots of piles right now.

My books are grouped into comics, fiction, and I guess "other" (non-fiction, poetry, anthologies, textbooks), and then they're in order by author/title.

Once upon a time I did organize more by genre or subject, but I had considerably fewer books in those days, and plenty of shelf space. I do still clump all the Sherlockian books together because it seems silly not to, though. And I guess I may do the same with the Faction Paradox books when I finish reading them, actually.

DVDs are broken into movies & TV shows, mostly for space reasons, and then sorted by title. With the CDs I still have, I think soundtracks & anything with multiple artists is on one shelf by title; everything else is artist/title.

I'm with Scola--everything by height. In fact, we're finalizing plans for the wall o'shelves in the living room, according to however many of whichever height, plus dvds. the ultimate goal? Everything out of boxes and on shelves all at the same time. We've never managed it before.

We do try to roughly group by subject (kids' books, fiction, photography, etc.), but height is the primary factor.

Height is also a concern in our house, but there's not much organization past that.

My books are separated by subject and then alphabetized first by author and then by title within the author. Other than the books I have no room for which are randomly piled in corners.

Fiction rough sort by first in initial of authors last name -- authors together, but space is at a premium, so no strict alphabetizing. non-Fiction is rough sort by the subject I think they are in the order I think they belong. There were to be no other items on the bookshelves but books -- that rule doesn't get followed. and the big shelf need cleaning , it is all higgly-piggly.

Music is not sorted . I couldn't decide how to do it -- it was supposed to be Matt's job. But it never really happened. I started doing it, but there is no where near enough room for it all. That may be part of my project when i take vacation at the end of the month

of course, there are piles every where. I wasn't counting those

My books tend not to form into piles, but rather spread out to cover every available surface.

When I organize, I organize by Teacher Books (texts, then Litrachur), Fantasy/SciFi, Romance, Bios, Cookbooks, and then random non fiction. Then alphabetize by author.

This happens about once every three years. Mostly I just stick 'em in empty spaces then remember where they are.

We have a somewhat confused order-by-subject system that The Girl invented. It separates out non-fiction and fiction. And then manages to fit almost everything ever written into 'feminism'.

Okay, as I think about it, I do try to keep all the titles by the same author together. But when they're different heights, it makes things difficult.

My books tend not to form into piles, but rather spread out to cover every available surface.

Hmm. My piles cover every available surface. I try to be more considerate now that I share a living space, but man, my apartment was hilarious. Bathroom counter? Comic books. Kitchen ledge? Library books. Endtables? Free-for-all battle of printed material. Insane, man.