I actually made the opposite experience. Books nowadays have so many different format and colors, it’s really hard to make it esthetically pleasing, I have multiple walls full of books and they look like a mess, I dislike it.
Even if I could make it look nice, it would then be an intellectual mess, it wouldn’t be organised properly, I would struggle to find anything.
Actually, good question, how do you people organise your books? (Full disclosure, I’m messy)
I organize them by the color, either rainbow-style or from darker to brighter.
> it wouldn’t be organised properly, I would struggle to find anything.
Libraries solve this with the Dewey Decimal Classification. Most people don't have enough books for it make sense though.
For me, I don't have that many paper books and the ones I own I know by the side and the color. I keep the books that I reference often in a separate place. I noticed I don't need to find all of the books, all of the time. So organize most of your books to look pretty.
You can also group similar books together on a single shelf and then order them by color. For example I have a dozen of cookbooks and those go on a separate shelf, arranged in a rainbow. I also have a book series that goes neatly together, so I keep them it grouped too.
I also organize my clothes like that too. By general category first (t-shirts, pants, socks, jackets), and then by color.
I used to be extremely messy too (piles of clothes and documents, cardboard boxes, you know the deal). I turned it around after I read the Marie Kondo book "The life-changing Magic of Tidying up". Then after I got the mess under control I look at the pictures for inspiration how to make it aesthetically pleasing. I got a lot of ideas from Pinterest (I know, I know), but you can do an image search or check the organization subreddits too.
Organizing books by colour, couldn't resist the link to Two Ronnies :) https://youtu.be/AYxmPHLU9oA?si=n8OACTqPyZ12oWeA
Put them backwards in the shelves – now everything is calm and paper-coloured.
Doesn't that make it exceedingly hard to locate specific books?
One thing I have notices about modern books is that they are a freaking huge. I have a large number of novels from the 1970s. Their are all 250 - 400 pages, about the the same as my wife's moderns books about people getting murdered. The 50 year old books are less than half the size. Why is there a need to make modern books into tomes?
Probably makes it feel more legitimate and "booky". Some young people i know got obsessed with the idea they should read more because it makes people more intelligent. Then they choose the murder of the week to read. If it's the same size as Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov it feels much weightier and important. In addition to flashy colorful covers, I'd imagine it's just an effective marketing choice
Learn French and then you can have a wall of books with white spines.