I know you can press and hold E to drag objects
but how do you actually stack books side by side?

There are book shelves that you can activate and just put the books "into" it. It will line them up.

Well if it's a bookshelf, put your cursor over it and it will say activate bookshelf. This will bring up the inventory menu and you can just select which books go in there and it will automatically stack them.

-cries-
now I know!
thanksthanks

there are special 'bookshelfs' that arrange books automatically when books are 'stored' into the container... looks cool, i have filled couple of bookshelf in the whiterun home.

yeah I've wanted to collect a [censored]ton of books and store them once I bought a house
but I've been trying to stack the books into non-bookshelf shelves, I guess?

I do wish there were more bookshelves. I only have two houses, but both are lacking in the bibliophile accoutrements.

do notice that most bookshelves have several separate shelves in them, like upper one and others beneath it, that get filled separately...

While we're on this topic, is the fact that we can only utilize either the top or bottom of a bookshelf a game design or is my game just glitched? I literally have 15-20 books stacked on my companion's bed in my house (not counting about another 20+ scattered on chairs, tables, and other locations within my house) at Whiterun because I can't use both shelves in my bookshelf.

In my Riften house there are 4 shelves, all of them can carry 15 or so books... in Whiterun it's just 2 shelves... not much overall...

You may use both shelves. Ensure you're pointing at the right shelf when activating.

the activation zones seem to overlap somewhat, so even if you aiming at the lower shelf it sometimes activates the upper one. Try slightly different spot on the shelf...

in whiterun there are 2 bookshelves, one in the 'lab' and the other near the fire. Both have 2 shelves in them. The one near the fire is bigger and can store more books per shelf

Hmmm, I could almost swear that I've meticulously scanned every inch of both bookshelves in my Whiterun house without any luck, but I'll go back and try again to see if I can get both shelves to work instead of just one. Then again, my weapons rack in that house is bugged for sure, which seems to be fairly common glitch on the consoles (I play on the PS3), so I may just be out of luck.

I love this feature. I wish it were easier to position other decorative items, but they really nailed bookshelves. Thank you, programmers!

Wait what? I didn't notice a shelf in the lab.... eh. O.O

I wish I could actually fill the shelves. By the time I reach the limit on any given shelf I still have all the books falling over.

Skyrim still needs a better system for placing physics objects. I want to build a fort with dwemer ingots, but right now I can't even replace the pot I knocked off a table.

Speaking of containers, what happened to writing desks and jewellery boxes? I miss those. They filled a good niche for certain types of objects (eg. all the notes go in the writing desk).

you need to put bigger books in them. lol
but seriously I've noticed it myself as well, sort of annoying... I wonder if it is possible to drag extra books in there to fill it up (haven't yet tried it, might sometime..)