7 ms·

I don't think it's necessarily bad -- I collect free ebooks when I can, even if I'm not interested in reading them now but think I might someday. Then, later if

I don't think it's necessarily bad -- I collect free ebooks when I can, even if I'm not interested in reading them now but think I might someday. Then, later if I'm thinking about learning Rust (for example), I can go to the free book collection of mine and see if I have anything, then read through them. I've done this a few times. Even if I only get value out of 20% of that collection, I wouldn't have known in advance what 20% I'd eventually be interested in. And I do still pay for physical books too (but I don't stockpile those, and buy them when I actually want to read them)

BossingAround 6y ago
I can see your point. From my perspective, the "let's collect it because what if I need it later" mindset is not wrong at all times, but I think we're selectively blind to those 95% in which case it's a miss (i.e. in our case, you'd download an ebook and forget you even have it in like a week). In ebooks, this doesn't really create a bad outcome, but I think this mindset can manifest in other aspects of our lives as well and that's where it's very much less desirable. It was just an offtopic remark uttered with no judgement, but it's something I've been sensitive in my own attitude.
- psexec 6y ago
  I collect every book that I come across, and I can't count the number of times it's been helpful (one month, or five years later). It doesn't matter if you can't remember the book after a week, fzf is here to help you. If you got interested in a new topic (like the aforementioned Rust), press Ctrl+T and type "rust". Or you can suppress the impulse and skip getting the book, then either forget the site altogether, or visit it five years later and find that it got shut down four years ago.
  - gowld 6y ago
    For every one site that shut down, there are a dozen replacements.
    - g-b-r 6y ago
      Not legal. There have been plenty of instances where you could get lifelong legal ownership of something very valuable only if you got it at a certain time, and that time often ends abruptly without warnings.
f0ok 6y ago
Umberto Eco had quite a library of unread books. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antilibrary/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antilib...
- alberto_ol 6y ago
  eco walking in his personal library https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF9tG5Q6NTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF9tG5Q6NTA
- g-b-r 6y ago
  And I thought that my ~1000 e-books were a record...
  - dhosek 6y ago
    1000 books is really not much. After culling, I have 1000 books on my read shelves and easily 200 or so unread books. And that's just what I have in print and doesn't count the music books or the rare book shelf or my wife's two bookcases of print books.
    - g-b-r 6y ago
      You're right indeed, maybe in the e-books side it's rarer... Anyway, my wallet felt it, considering I've done most of it in about 4 years with a relatively modest salary
      - dhosek 6y ago
        After I got my first job, I went on a bookstore crawl through Santa Monica back when the Third Street Promenade was full of independent shops and bookstores. I came home with a car full of books and a thousand-dollar credit card bill. It's easy to forget that your income is finite when you're young and foolish.
        g-b-r 6y ago
kubav 6y ago
Problem is that you rarely find good books this way so you have pile of books which are not worth reading. Determining which books are good takes a lot of time. This is reason I have stopped hoarding books from cheap or free sources. It is way better to download/buy/pirate books recommended on the internet than trying to find them myself.
- snakeboy 6y ago
  A reasonable strategy for me is: 1. Trawl through a resource like this when I come across them 2. If one looks interesting, do a quick google search of "[sub-category] recommended texts for [my-level] level" 3. Buy or Pirate the top recommended text Resources like this serve as good inspiration to learn about something new.

BossingAround 6y ago

I can see your point. From my perspective, the "let's collect it because what if I need it later" mindset is not wrong at all times, but I think we're selectively blind to those 95% in which case it's a miss (i.e. in our case, you'd download an ebook and forget you even have it in like a week). In ebooks, this doesn't really create a bad outcome, but I think this mindset can manifest in other aspects of our lives as well and that's where it's very much less desirable. It was just an offtopic remark uttered with no judgement, but it's something I've been sensitive in my own attitude.

psexec 6y ago
I collect every book that I come across, and I can't count the number of times it's been helpful (one month, or five years later). It doesn't matter if you can't remember the book after a week, fzf is here to help you. If you got interested in a new topic (like the aforementioned Rust), press Ctrl+T and type "rust". Or you can suppress the impulse and skip getting the book, then either forget the site altogether, or visit it five years later and find that it got shut down four years ago.
- gowld 6y ago
  For every one site that shut down, there are a dozen replacements.
  - g-b-r 6y ago
    Not legal. There have been plenty of instances where you could get lifelong legal ownership of something very valuable only if you got it at a certain time, and that time often ends abruptly without warnings.

f0ok 6y ago

Umberto Eco had quite a library of unread books. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antilibrary/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antilib...

alberto_ol 6y ago
eco walking in his personal library https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF9tG5Q6NTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF9tG5Q6NTA
g-b-r 6y ago
And I thought that my ~1000 e-books were a record...
- dhosek 6y ago
  1000 books is really not much. After culling, I have 1000 books on my read shelves and easily 200 or so unread books. And that's just what I have in print and doesn't count the music books or the rare book shelf or my wife's two bookcases of print books.
  - g-b-r 6y ago
    You're right indeed, maybe in the e-books side it's rarer... Anyway, my wallet felt it, considering I've done most of it in about 4 years with a relatively modest salary
    - dhosek 6y ago
      After I got my first job, I went on a bookstore crawl through Santa Monica back when the Third Street Promenade was full of independent shops and bookstores. I came home with a car full of books and a thousand-dollar credit card bill. It's easy to forget that your income is finite when you're young and foolish.
      - g-b-r 6y ago

kubav 6y ago

Problem is that you rarely find good books this way so you have pile of books which are not worth reading. Determining which books are good takes a lot of time. This is reason I have stopped hoarding books from cheap or free sources. It is way better to download/buy/pirate books recommended on the internet than trying to find them myself.

snakeboy 6y ago
A reasonable strategy for me is: 1. Trawl through a resource like this when I come across them 2. If one looks interesting, do a quick google search of "[sub-category] recommended texts for [my-level] level" 3. Buy or Pirate the top recommended text Resources like this serve as good inspiration to learn about something new.