Strut your Shelves featuring Melissa from Palmer's Picks for Reading

I've known Melissa for years, long before I started this here blog.  We both happen to belong to the same yahoo group where we talk about, what else, books and reading.

Melissa was kind enough to jump on board and agree to my pleading and feature her shelves on here.  If I must be honest, I've known her for years but I've never seen her shelves!  I can't believe how many she has!  She is one lucky woman to have a husband willing to make shelves to accommodate all the books she has.   In fact, when she sent me the pictures she said "Taking the pictures, I realize I have a crap load of books." lol!  Yes she does! But I, for one, think it's wonderful!  I would rather fill up my house with books instead of a lot of other items people collect.  

Melissa also had this to say about her shelves:

The books on the floor are the ARCs that I have been sent to review.  The ceiling shelves are over top of the doorways in our hallways--Lucky built me shelves whereever he could.

The books aren't really organized anymore because I have too many but the scary thing is I can usually remember what shelf section the book is in.  

If you haven't checked out Melissa's blog, Palmer's Picks for Reading, I highly recommend it.  The reviews are short and sweet and to the point. They are perfect for somebody like me who doesn't have time to read a lot of posts every day and quickly falls behind in my blog reading.   I'm constantly adding young adult titles to my wish list thanks to her, and cozy mysteries, she's a cozy fan too. 

Without further ado, here are her shelves: (you can click on each picture to view a bigger version if you wish)

I want to know what that fancy looking book is under Breaking Dawn (at least I think it's Breaking Dawn..I do believe it's one of the Twilight saga books anyway).  I sure hope the ones on the shelves above the doors are ones you have already read!  I can picture myself falling off a ladder trying to get a book down, I'm such a klutz.

Thanks Melissa for agreeing to appear on Strut your Shelves, I don't know about anybody else but I enjoyed looking at your shelves and books. 

(If you would like to be featured on Strut Your Shelves, please email me at notenoughbooksblog@gmail.com.  Don't forget, you don't have to blog to be featured, you just need to have books on shelves.)

Strut Your Shelves featuring...me!

Thank you for joining me on this first ever addition of Strut Your Shelves!

If you would like to be featured on Strut Your Shelves, please send me an email!  I'm looking for lots of submissions so I can make this a regular feature.  Please email me at notenoughbooksblog(at)gmail(dot)com.

I thought I would take you on a tour of my bookshelves, just to get the party started.  You might have seen pictures of it before, but that's ok, I'm going to explain it a bit more this time around.

Currently I only have one set of bookshelves, or a library cabinet as I sometimes call it.  I would love to have more, but alas, for now I just have one and the rest of my books live in boxes.   I'm lucky enough to have a room dedicated to books in my house.  Yup, I have a library!  The only problem, the bookshelves I envision (taking up one complete wall) will need to be custom made and Husband and I don't think we can do it, so we have to pay somebody.  That's expensive.  We focused on updated the rest of our house first, but that's done now, and we can focus on saving for the library. Yay!  But..alas..back to the library case I do have.

Here it is!  Hope you like it! (Myla decided she wanted her picture taken too). You can click on each picture to view a bigger image, if you wish.

Here's what I have on my shelves.  The door on the far right contains some YA and some random fiction.  These are books that I either loved, plan to get to soon, or are ones I plan to loan my sister when she needs more books.  There is no organization plan to this area.

The two doors in the middle contain all mysteries, mostly cozy.  These are organized alphabetically by author.  I have a lot more books than room, so once I filled the shelves up once, I started back at the top and went down again.   As I've bought more books for the series or new series, I've had to try and get them in the right spot...which has proved very difficult.  It's a mess!  If it wasn't books, I would fix the mess, but since it is books and I like looking at them, I'm ok with it for now.

The shelves on the left contain the books I'm hoping to read for challenges.   Once I sign up for a challenge I go through the books I have and find ones for that challenge.  Then I move them on these shelves (along with a print out of the challenges and the books I'm reading for them).  Then when I'm ready to start a new book, I browse those shelves first in hopes one will catch my interest.   Currently, the bottom shelf holds the books Husband has recently bought and read as well as some books borrowed from a friend.

Oh, and see the white bag and misc books on the far right of the photo?  The books on the floor are ones I pulled out for the WWII challenge last year, as possible reads, and I didn't want to put them back in a box.  The White bag holds books my Grandpa has brought to me from their house so I can put them in my library (if I want).  Isn't that nice of him? I love that he is always thinking of my library and offering me books he thinks will make a great addition.

Now, because I know you are wondering, how many books do I have that aren't on the shelves and where am I storing them?  Why, they are in that same room..but in boxes.   Make no mistake though..they are organized in boxes.

Now, because I like to know how people organize shelves, I'm going to tell you how I plan to organize my books once I have my shelves built.  I plan to have my shelves organized alphabetically by author, and genre. I know, that's going to be a task, but I can't wait!  I love to organize a big project like that!  Rest assured, I will share pictures again once the shelving is in place.  How could I not?  Don't hold your breath though, it's going to be expensive to pay somebody to do it so it won't be done for awhile.  I will however share a picture of what I want my shelving to look like.  I have had a picture from a Better Homes and Gardens magazine on our fridge for almost 2 years now as a reminder of what I want.  Yesterday when reading Kittling: Books, she linked to a bookshelf and it was a great picture of what I had in mind.  Very similar to the picture growing up, but easier to see the size of the spaces.   So, click HERE to go the the NY Times article that has a picture of what I want my shelving to look like.

Thanks for reading this first edition of Strut Your Shelves, I hope you enjoyed it!   If you liked it and would like to see your shelves on display, please email me!  Bloggers and non-bloggers are invited to participate.  You can send as many pictures as you want, or just pick one or two bookcases that you like.  You can give as much or as little detail as you want.

Coming Soon: Strut Your Shelves

Very soon you will see a regular feature on this blog, a feature I'm calling "Strut Your Shelves". This is where you, my wonderful readers, get to show off your stuff...er..your shelves. Yes...bookshelves. As a reader, and I'm sure your like me in this regard, I love looking at other people's bookshelves. When I walk into a room that has a bookshelf, that's what gets my attention first. I also believe that most bookshelves represent their owners. Do they have mostly mystery or fiction? Is there a section on birds or dogs? Is there any kind of order to the books or does it seem random? Are the shelve's messy or neat? Do the shelve's look like a book lover lives there or are they just for show? So many questions!

What this feature is for, is for bloggers and blog readers to show off their shelves. Send me a picture of your shelves...either a specific one you want to show or multiple ones. Tell me a little about it. How is it organized or isn't it organized? What books do you keep on this specific bookcase? Is there a story behind the bookshelves/bookcase?

Here's how I cam up with this idea. I'm a follower of Kittling: Books and I love her Scene of the Blog feature. I also noticed that anytime somebody sends her a picture of the place they blog and there are bookshelves, I'm always looking at them. Based on the comments that others leave, I know I'm not the only one. I thought it would be fun to have a regular feature where we get to look at each other's bookshelves/bookcases. Sound like fun? It does to me and I hope it does to you as well.

Later this week I'll show off my bookcase. You've probably seen it before, when I showed pictures of my library. However I'm going to show you pictures again and also tell you how I came to be in possession of the library cabinets and why they books look the way they do. I sure hope you'll come back later in the week to see it.

I also hope that you will enjoy this feature and contact me to be featured! Please do contact me! I hope you want to participate and show your shelves as well! You don't have to have a blog in order to participate, you only have to be a reader.