I thought I'd give a little tour through my recently rearranged bookcases. Warning: A lot of pictures (of sometimes questionable quality (I hate my digital camera)). Also may cause eye strain as you try to figure out what books I own.
Top shelf down of the tall, thin bookcase:
Most of my reference books.
My TBR Jar books.
A couple of reference books plus hardbacks books I have no other room for. Not bad books, but not great, either.
More reference books.
Many books I'd actually forgotten I had. I've read most of them once and simply want to keep a collection. Others I'm still deciding if I should keep them or not.
Most of my mangas. Top shelf down:
Good mangas that are too tall to fit with my others (which you'll see later). Including one that is quickly becoming a favorite in Dogs: Bullets and Carnage.
First four HP books in paperback and mangas that I either don't know why I bought and could probably get rid of or are written by CLAMP. Or are volume one of Yu Yu Hakusho...
HP books five and six (which fit on no shelf!) and my classics - most of which I've never read. (Though Hound of the Baskervilles and Pride & Prejudice are there.)
Top down: These top two shelves are where most of my favorite books that I've recently purchased (like in the last four years) are.
If you could see them, those are my Michael J. Sullivan books and my Steampunk Chronicles. (When Rhune comes out next year, Kady Cross' books will have to move.) And my TBR Jar. Next to that is where I put my books I've finished before they get shelved.
Oversized hardbacks that I like and YA hardbacks that I liked/really liked as well as a couple oversized paperbacks and a few YA paperbacks that I really liked.
Odd assortment (and assorted heights) of books that were good enough, but just missed my 'great' shelves or that I didn't much care for but didn't dislike enough to box-up. At least, not yet.
Ignore the top shelf. (Because I said that, I just know there will be people that won't.) It's my CD's.
Down:
Classics. Mostly unread, except my three Jack Williamson books. At the other end are more reference books.
My three Elizabeth Peters hardbacks and Lindsay Buroker's books. Opposite end are my other favorite mangas: Arisa, Pandora Hearts and the first light novel for Devil May Cry.
Top shelf down:
Very, very top are my cookbooks.
My paperback non-Doyle Holmes stories as well as my copies of the Complete Collection parts 1&2. Romance novels.
D&D books that were merely 'okay' Should try re-reading some of them but...I have better things to re-read.
Horatio. ('Poor Horatio, I hardly knew him.' That quote is right, right?) My oversized paperback of Tomb of the Golden Bird by Elizabeth Peters.
My Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels collection. (Same author, different pen names.)
Top shelf down:
Dragonlance books that I ought to just git rid of because I'll never re-read them. (Not limited to, but including anything that Hickman touched) and two Eberron books that deserve a second chance.
Mystery books. Mostly Agatha Christie books.
More Agatha Christie books.
Except my Elizabeth Peters books, these two shelves hold my best paperbacks.
My favorite D&D and Magic tie in novels. My favorite with non-game tie ins and some media tie in books. (Including two media tie ins that I should get rid of.)
Top shelf down:
Paperbacks that are almost exclusively of the 'yeah, I bought it and read it but...meh.' They'll stay to make my paperback shelves look a little less empty.
Empty shelf!
Mysteries. Ones I liked enough to maybe re-read, ones I'll loan to my mom and yet more Agatha Christie.
Not a shelf, but the top of my desk has been appropriated by the overfill of my first TBR Jar shelf. These are books I've not read, with the ones on top being the ones drawn from the jar for the month.
So, this is how my bookcases fit together and what that part of the room usually looks like. Basically, the easier a book is to see/get to, the more I liked it. Using that as a base, it should be pretty easy to tell which books I like the most. I guess you could say I organize my bookshelves by favorites. Back when almost all I owned were paperbacks, they were organized by author's last name. Now it's a hodge-podge, but I can always find what I want.
How do you arrange your books? Title? Genre? Author? Hight? Color? (Seriously, have you seen some of those awesome 'rainbow shelves'?) I thought about cleaning my shelves off of everything but books, but I
