Forget color-coding — pros say there are better ways to organize your bookshelf.

There are nearly as many ways to organize your books as there are genres of literature: alphabetically; by author, topic, time period or geographic area; or with any number of other useful categories.

I sometimes moonlight as an interior designer, which gives me insights into how easily people let style trends (and worries about which ones are hot or not), distract them from the essential task of ...