Forum

I place books by where I will think to look for them - series stay together where I think of them as a series; books that I think of by author, go by author. Other cook books are organized in categories such as retro, street, newspapers, historical ... others are arranged by regions, and the remainder are in alphabetic order by author within cookbook types - meat, sandwich, bread, pasta, masa harina, vegetables, fermentation ...

Sound a bit chaotic but it puts like things together for browsing and uses where it will occur to me to look rather than requiring me to remember author or title. I'd had a much more librarian approach before I moved ... I love my present "match my brain" approach.

I pretty much do as TrishaCP says. But I start with general topic books by author, continue with vegetarian books by author, then regions, then baking books. I finish with books for special devices like Instant Pot, Air Fryer, Bread Machine.

Authors that I have most, if not all, of their cookbooks are grouped together regardless of the subject. Those are Ottolenghi, Nigella, Nigel, Jamie, Melissa, Dorie, and Diana (on first name terms with them all!). Everything else is by subject - restaurant/chef, baking/desserts, vegetarian/vegan, etc or region. If something is both regional and subject, then it goes where my brain thinks it should be such as The Italian Baker (baking) or Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen (Indian). Not logical but it works for me.

Originally Posted by: Jane

Authors that I have most, if not all, of their cookbooks are grouped togather regardless of the subject. Those are Ottolenghi, Nigella, Nigel, Jamie, Melissa, Dorie, and Diana (on first name terms with them all!).

I have a very similar grouping of authors on what I call my everyday shelf: Nigel, Nigella, Jamie, Hugh and Sophie (very anglophile, yes). The other books are sorted by author name.

This may not be the best way to organize, but this is how mine are arranged:

Education/Informational
General all purpose
International
Regional
Holiday
Vegetarian/Vegan
Cooking appliances (Recipes for slow cooker, pressure cooker, etc)
Cookbooks that feature specific food types (Meatball, ice cream, popcorn, etc)

I'm just setting up my new bookshelves, so I'll test this out for a bit and reorganize if it's not working.

MarciK

Welcome! :)

It looks like we have a similar way of organizing our books. Mine are

Reference
General (I have integrated vegetarian into these, although I used to keep them separate)
Meat
Specific ingredient (eggs, yogurt, etc. and specific food types like soups)
Make ahead/Batch/Freezer cooking 
Regional
Holiday/Entertaining/Bar
Desserts
Appliance and method cooking (sheet pan, dutch oven, rice cooker, Instant Pot...)
Fermenting and Preserving
Baking & Pasta
Beans & Grains
Vegetables
Herbs
Fruits

I garden so I have a lot of books that focus on vegetables, fruits and putting up. 

I have these small 1/4" round green stickers that I put at the base of the spine when a book has been indexed. That way I know which books I will need to manually check if I'm looking for a particular recipe. It also helps me when I am looking for a new book to index.

anightowl - I do the same thing with the stickers! Though mine are red and mean that I have gone through the book and bookmarked on EYB all the recipes I want to try. It makes my searches easier when the number of results are overwhelming to just see recipes I've already tagged that I am interested in them.

I've run out of space and am re-arranging books and bookcases.  That means the there are a lot of "TBD's", to-be-decided imported books that were scattered all over the house.  I bought a small wire-rack bookcase at Home Depot, and put it on a wall next to the bed for temporary consolidation until I've got everything fixed and labeled.  Best Thing Ever.  Every morning, I lie awake and stare at the books within eyesight (retired, so no rush to get up).  I'm up to 100+ books, and have pulled and perused one each day, many of whom I had forgotten I even owned.  OK, not really an Organization Plan, but really neat for one who reads cookbooks like novels. 

For me I am finding that ipad is easier on my eyes when reading books. 

I'm glad the sticker idea is useful to others.

I chose green for my indexed books because it matches the EYB logo color.

I do red stickers too - but those are for the books that aren't in the EYB system because they are missing an ISBN, and can't be imported (yet). 

Blue goes on garden books that are in the EYB system, do have recipes, but are not indexed. They are shelved with my garden books, but the sticker gives me a heads up there are some unindexed recipes inside.

I have yellow stickers on the cooking "Reference" books that don't have any recipes.

I may have just a teeny, tiny touch of OCD... :)