As I open my Kindle today, I see an ever-growing number of books that are not read. I will never get around to reading all the books on my Kindle or from my library, is a fact.
It is also a constant source of snide remarks from my well-wishers. They always remind me, why they won’t be interested in reading the new book.
Why do I have all these books in my library?
I stumbled upon the word ‘Antilibrary’, while reading ‘The Black Swan’ by ‘Nassim Nicholas Taleb’. In his book, Taleb uses Italian writer Umberto Eco’s uncommon relationship between books and reading as a parable of the most fruitful relationship with knowledge.
The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
I see these unread books as a powerful reminder, of how much I don’t know. Most of my well-wishers miss a fundamental point on books when they ask, Have you read all the books?
Taleb goes on to say
We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So this tendency to offend Eco’s library sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations. People don’t walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it’s the job of their competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did. Just as we need to stand library logic on its head, we will work on standing knowledge itself on its head.
It is such a powerful concept. What if, we start making anti-resumes that cover:-
- education that we didn’t pursue
- concepts we don’t know
- titles we don’t want to hold
- opportunities that we didn’t pursue
A person is best judged, by what he chooses NOT to do than by what he does.
Here are a few samples from my Antilibrary which I have picked up in the last week :
- How to live by Sarah Bakewell
- Citizenship in a Republic by Theodore Roosevelt
- Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
- The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr
- The Art of Explanation by Ros Atkins
- The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr
- Brave New Words by Salman Khan
I have been buying at least one book every week over the years. The biggest gift I have gotten out of this habit is I have made friends with folks who are crazy about books and keep sending recommendations my way. The posts that I write, are mostly due to newsletters or books that I am reading or it has been a topic of conversation with these friends.
I would be eager to know, which books are in your Antilibrary.