Building an antilibrary: the power of unread books
nesslabs.com
nesslabs.com
If I read a book, I usually get rid of it by selling it to a used bookstore, or handing it to somebody else. I buy books that look interesting when I see them, then take them home and shelve them, and promptly forget about them. When I want to read a new book, I browse my shelves the same way I'd browse at a bookstore, except every single book is interesting, or was at once time.
Sure, it's insane, but it's what I like to do.
A side effect is that I occasionally buy the same books several times, either because I want to reread it, or just because I forget that I've bought it already. That doesn't bother me, they all come from used bookstores I want to support anyway.
I have separate shelves for books I don't want to get rid of, like nice editions and heirlooms. But for the most part, almost all the books I own are unread, despite reading being one of the things I do the most.
However I’ve also given myself permission to just read parts of books. Especially nonfiction: pull it down, read a specific chapter, eventually back to the shelf.
another cool thing is if you’re looking for something specific, rather than google it, you prob have a few books on your shelf. An example for me recently was something like “growing herbs”.
Anyway, nice to see someone else with the same strain of bibliophilia, hope you have a good week!
The nicest thing is that I have enough books to read for years now, so if I'm bored and don't feel like reading, that usually means that I should either sleep or go for a walk.
For reference books, I have started keeping around textbooks. When I want a discussion of X, between the web and the textbooks, it usually works out. (And my public libraries mostly don't stock textbooks - never understood that - so I keep some paper there.)
A late theologian from my country, truly wonderful and witty academic, used to say something like: it would be insulting for a book if you grab it from a store and start reading right away. A well-mannered, civil reader will first let the book mature in the shelf for a good ten years or so. :)
This was said tongue-in-cheek, obviously, but it's a good line. She was a classical philologist, translated works by Platon, Hieronymus, Martin Luther etc. So I suppose she lived in a somewhat different time zone as compared to the rest of us -- as in, if your mental horizon expands to some 2000 years, a decade of waiting for a book to "mature in the shelf" is, indeed, nothing. :)
I am wasteful with books I physically purchase. I am wasteful with movies I physically purchase.
There is a used DVD store nearby. There are used bookstores.
Sometimes I buy a series of kindle books, and quit part way through the series.
Sometimes I start a project, then leave it unfinished.
forgive yourself for the mess.
because somewhere in all this mess is true happiness.
Honestly this is not a terrible approach. Years ago I bought TLPI and TAOE and have in felt a little guilty when I see them in my library (TBH being displayed with a bit of pride) but I haven’t read them.
The thing is that it’s been actually multiple times when I need to look up how to write to pipes in C or how to use a FET and I’ve just gone upstairs, grab the book and learn all I need to know. Sure, there’s kagi and chatgpt but I’d argue that both of those resources are not the same level of quality than a good book is!
Same has happened a Lua book, multiple Maths books and so on… bought them aspiring to read them, felt guilty about not reading them cover to cover, turns out they have been actually useful when I least expected.
Than Taleb would come up with the idea of an antilibrary in black swan makes a lot of sense… that might be another I might need to buy and not read :-)
Last year I did the math: If I wanted to read them all, assuming I'd read one book per week (a pace that I was able to keep up with when I had no kids), I'd be way beyond retirement age until I could add another book to the list. And given my actual reading pace currently, there was no chance to finish the list in my lifetime. After some soul-searching I discarded all wish lists in an act of liberation from self-inflicted fear of missing out.
I remembered I had two history books covering the Japanese surrender in detail, with proper cites and everything, which thoroughly supported the former.
If you think about a traditional communal library, it will have many titles. Some you may have read, others you have not.
So this feels more of a cache hierarchy. You have many books you haven’t read, or at least fully internalized. The books you have read and internalized are in your head, and you can opt to not retain the physical instantiation if you are confident they will stay in cache.
⸻
1. Barring sudden influxes of books which does happen on occasion. Moving most of the books off of my Amazon wishlist into a wishlist at my local indie’s website² has reduced the chances of this happening at Christmas or my birthday which has happened in the past.
2. Which has about 130 books on it right now.
We keep about 1000 physical books (sadly constrained by space, we'll expand into a new house one day), but they're the kinds of books that 50 years from now you would still be interested in. Or that we would want to give away to people in that timeframe. Or that have some particular sentimental value. And a far larger digital library with both more breath and that's much more timely.
Not only has tech based "browsing" failed to even come close to the power of a full bookshelf, it has absolutely no transfer quality.
I want my kids to see my bookshelf!
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
Your library is your paradise.What a wonderful way to praise curiosity and intellectual humility.
I kind of like this idea.
I later joked with my dad about making a resume section like what you describe - saying I do not yet have experience with foo, bar, baz. Just to hit the initial keywords scan some shops were apparently doing, but without lying.