29 ms·

The value of owning more books than you can read (2018)

194 points by PikelEmi 4y ago

wccrawford 4y ago
Newsflash: Those "unread books" are still as "valuable" if they aren't in your library yet because you can always acquire them later when you actually want to read them. That means that the smart thing to do is buy them as you read them, and not hoard them.
- Aaargh20318 4y ago
  > That means that the smart thing to do is buy them as you read them, and not hoard them. And this is one of the major benefits of e-books: you can postpone the purchase until about 15 seconds before you want to read the book.
- ledpup 4y ago
  In some places there are public libraries. You can go and sit there for hours everyday and marvel at all the thousands of books you'll never, ever read. Can also be done at bookshops.
- skytreader 4y ago
  > you can always acquire them later when you actually want to read them That doesn't track with my experience at all for a number of reasons: - Smaller bookstores who may or may not be an official part of the publishing supply chain stock smaller amount of copies of a given book. Once an edition sells out, they might not even have the means to restock/order from a new batch of printing. - Even big chain bookstores have to consider supply and demand economics when stocking their shelves so even them can't guarantee "perpetual availability" of a title. - Not to mention, books go out of print, even way before they go in the public domain. The best way to get a copy is by accident in a thrift shop. If I encounter one I really like, the best move for me would be to buy it then and there, my current reading queue be damned. - Admittedly, acquiring books is easier now due to Amazon, et. al., but we are still very from from being able to acquire a book when you actually want to read them. Not all books are available to buy online!
  - brightball 4y ago
    Antique stores are one of favorite sources for books for this reason.
  - mbg721 4y ago
    This is a big problem for board games (whose fans also collect large numbers of them on shelves to be seen in interviews). Even well-regarded games often don't get a reprint, so it's not too uncommon for a game that's a few years old to sell for a couple hundred dollars on the secondary market.
- Kaibeezy 4y ago
  Disagree. If, when you see a book, you have a flash of insight or spark of interest, buy it right then and there. Preserve it as a pilot light.
- layer8 4y ago
  > when you actually want to read them. The point is that them being present in your library serves as a physical reminder that you might want to read them (whereas otherwise you’d forget about them), and when you decide you want to read them, you can then do it instantly. As others have noted, it also avoids the problem of books having gone out of circulation.
ledpup 4y ago
Ahh... the hubris of modernity's overconsumption. Books, oil, people, food, structures, travelling without moving... We produced and consumed to the point where the world was no longer enough. 'Tis a shame it cost us our civilisation.
- Freak_NL 4y ago
  If one is going to over-consume anything, let it be books. Minimal environmental impact (reusable and recyclable), and intellectually stimulating. Minimal negative health effects too with a proper posture and as long as you don't read a book while crossing a street.
  - ledpup 4y ago
    No, overconsume everything, else you're not doing it right. 8 billion people with 30,000 books each... I'm trying to math it...
    - peterbraden 4y ago
      At that scale you might solve the carbon sequestration problem
    - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
      30,000 is an incredibly large number of books for one person to have. Assuming that each book is a fairly narrow .75 inches and your shelves have 8 layers vertically, you're going to need 234 linear feet of shelves. Assuming your shelves are 3 feet apart with six inches on each side for the shelves, you need 468 square feet of floor space dedicated exclusively to book shelves. That's roughly equivalent to each person in the US using their entire living space for books. I'm pretty sure worldwide, most people would need more than their entire living space.
- baxtr 4y ago
  Over consuming social media sites is also a thing I hear
- 4y ago
Brajeshwar 4y ago
I have enough books to read and I do enjoy reading a good number. At most times, I usually have a buffer of about 5-7 physical books, and little about 10-15 in digital unread. The one thing I admire about my father-in-law are his books. He is into literature with lots written and published and still continuing to help other authors at 80+ years of age. I always have seen him amongst books and has a room full of books on the walls, floor, tables, and everywhere. His focus is specifically on folklores from around the world. He know where to go in USA or UK and buy very specific rare books (mostly used). I'm pretty sure he has read thousands and thousands more still unread in his library. He once sent me on an adventure looking for a specific library in Austin, Texas and see if I can buy/steal a particular book. I finally got someone ship a used copy to California, then to India. I like the idea of having unread books around that I know I can read, and others that I can re-read. I'm, however, unsure if this is good or anything advantageous than anyone else that just reads what they want to or need to.
WalterBright 4y ago
I'm constantly amused by the regular spectacle of people being remotely interviewed, and the ubiquitous bookshelf just behind them. I bet they carefully curate the titles in view. I always want to challenge them on if they'd read any. P.S. I have far, far, far more books than I could possibly read.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Foobar8568 4y ago
  I second the far far far part. While I have surely close to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblioth%C3%A8que_de_la_Pl%C3%A9iade https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblioth%C3%A8que_de_la_Pl%C..., they won't be shown in any calls, and I read just maybe 5 top. My reason, I see them as investment for later, one day, I'll have time, and if I don't, my daughter will. She already expressed crazily she wanted to read them but at 8, and considering my culture, it's hard to curate some accessible books. Well I know some are clearly not for her (Jin Ping Mei) .
- lupire 4y ago
  bookspine ad spots are the new banner ad spots.
- jon-wood 4y ago
  I work with someone who has a bookshelf behind them containing books ordered by spine colour, making a spectrum. It’s very pretty, but I highly doubt she’s read any of them.
  - larve 4y ago
    It's actually not the worst organizing system, I often remember books by their color.
    - wikfwikf 4y ago
      But looking for a red book on the red shelf is much harder than looking for a red book on the 'history' shelf, or even on the 'second from the top in the front room where I saw it last' shelf!
grkvlt 4y ago
For those, like myself, who don't quite know enough Greek grammar to work it out properly, I looked up the definition of _Entomophagy_ ... it is derived from the Greek words 'entomon' (insect) and 'phagein' (to eat) and it describes the practice of eating insects; particularly by humans. Good to know in these exciting times!
kaashif 4y ago
Is this article actually just complete nonsense? I can just look at my wishlist to see how many books I want to buy that I haven't bought yet. Then when I want to read one, I buy it. Then I read it. I admit sometimes I hate a book so much I don't finish it and buy another, but I don't think that's the kind of unread book being talked about. Maybe it's not nonsense, actually, is this article just some kind of post hoc justification for impulse buying tons of books?
- jgtrosh 4y ago
  Without entirely defending the article, its claim seems to be “people tend to read more when they own more”: > [...] studies have shown that book ownership and reading typically go hand in hand to great effect. So, you are unaffected by this claimed phenomenon, good for you; but you haven't really debunked the claim either.
  - conanite 4y ago
    Another claim seems to be that a collection of unread books serves as a personal reminder of ignorance, that the un-known always exceeds the known, a kind of "memento ignorantiae" that gives us the humility and motivation to always seek to learn more rather than remain complacently content with the knowledge we have already acquired. And possibly the physicality of a dead-tree library carries this effect more forcibly than an online shopping list. Pardon my latin.
- a9h74j 4y ago
  > Then when I want to read one, I buy it. In the past I collected half-read books. Now I collect little cards, each with a book title and author written on it. Ordering online is only a search and click away.
secondcoming 4y ago
Having loads of books is great until you have to move home.
- mbg721 4y ago
  I would think you'd have to have an awful lot of them before it became a problem. Books tend to be pretty small and less oddly-shaped than most other stuff you have to move. They're so efficient to pack that you end up with some really heavy boxes if you're not careful, but after the first one or two, you get the hang of how many to pack.
  - Freak_NL 4y ago
    Also, the glorious invention known as the banana box helps. Planning a move? Start collecting banana boxes from supermarkets (they put them out for customers to take for free, because it saves them having to tear them up and fill their paper waste bin with it — don't forget the cardboard inserts for the 'gap' in the bottom of the box). For most books these have a much better shape than ordinary moving boxes, and they are sturdy enough (unlike the former). Free, easy to lift, easy to stack, and it saves the books from damage. Second-hand booksellers who visit bookfairs swear by these boxes.
    - yetanotherloser 4y ago
      This is true. A very different plan that also works is sorting by exact size and packing the smaller sizes very neatly and densely in carrier bags. Push one against each end and then fill the middle so you don't end up pushing a book downwards against the bag end, just books against books. Fill so there's no rattle room and start another row. They form tight blocks that keep the corners safe.
    - mbg721 4y ago
      My dad's big tip was to ask the guys at Kinko's for old printer-paper boxes, for similar reasons.
- ekianjo 4y ago
heikkilevanto 4y ago
I have a different policy. I read a lot, but almost exclusively from the public library (which is very good, here in Copenhagen). If I like a book so much that I expect to read it again at least twice, then I may buy a copy. Last time I moved, I gave over half of my books away.
- dailykoder 4y ago
  This. That's basically what I do too, with a small difference. First off: I usually keep all my text and non-fiction books, but I gave away most fiction. It doesn't matter if I bought it or got it from a public library. A lot of them just go back into another public library or just in front of my doorsteps for people to take em. There are just some all time classics and fiction that struck me the right way at the right time, but I won't read most fiction a second time, so why keep em?
- bufordtwain 4y ago
  Same here. I don't think accumulating books is a great idea, it uses up trees, costs money and takes up space. Libraries are wonderful.
  - april_22 4y ago
    Also much easier to focus and absorb the knowledge
- Spooky23 4y ago
  I’m fortunate in that I live a few hundred feet from a branch library with access to an awesome inter-library loan program. To me, the ability to pick up a book and just start reading is amazing. Also, my wife is excellent at picking books for me, (better than me!) so it’s a sort of family activity.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  for those who haven't heard, Libby is an app that lets you borrow books (epub and audio) from your local library using a library card (in the US, can't verify other countries). it's' super easy and you can add multiple library cards to access several systems. completely free.
suprjami 4y ago
"We love to buy books because we believe we're buying the time to read them." - Warren Zevon https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43290-we-love-to-buy-books-because-we-believe-we-re-buying https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43290-we-love-to-buy-books-...
- m463 4y ago
  I buy books because I'm imagining something like trinity learning to fly a helicopter in The Matrix... <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoAk7zBTrvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoAk7zBTrvo>
- tacon 4y ago
  I believe the source of that idea is this famous quote: "Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents." -- Arthur Schopenhauer https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_schopenhauer_121051 https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_schopenhauer_12105...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
larve 4y ago
I own many more books than I will ever read. I also own many books where I have read maybe 2 chapters, usually the first two but not always. Of course, I could download them as PDF, or put them in my wishlist, or keep endless lists of interesting books in my knowledge base, and I do, but the result is very different. 1. the actual physicality of the book ensures that I will not forget it. It is literally there on the shelf. 2. I used to LOVE libraries as a kid. As an adult with a very specific set of interests (computers, ecology, typography), I am usually frustrated by the selection available. What I have now is basically my ideal library, right here at home, and no one is going to bug me about writing inside the books or returning them late. The selection is vast and carefully curated, and I am guaranteed to come out of it delighted when I decide to borrow a few books. Because of that, I also print out and ring-bind a huge amount of PDFs and articles and "in-between" books, to be able to put them up on shelves too. For example, I wanted the other day to do some writing about the fundamentals of software performance, and I gathered the following books, which I plucked for the stuff I needed: - computer systems - bryant & o'hallaron - bpf performance tools - gregg - systems performance - gregg - every computer performance book - wescott - sql performance explained - winand - computer organization and design - hennessy, patterson - computer architecture - hennessy, patterson - algorithms - sedgewick - understanding software dynamics - sites - design of data intensive applications - kleppman - graphics programming black book - abrash (why not!) There is no way a public library would have them all in stock. I also would have had to go there, carry the books back or study on site. all of these books had various amounts of marginalia, folded corners, printouts of papers laid in. This physicality gives me a lot of context information. I often do the same kind of "study session" with PDFs, and it's not hard to find "library" sites online, but it feels much less "intentional" to me. edit: It's probably also an education thing. My grandfather was an art scholar and my uncle an accomplished lawyer. They each wrote many books and articles, and both had gigantic libraries of unread books they would pick from when writing. I grew up with my grandfather at the kitchen table with a stack of books and his boxes of index cards, staring at us kids to please shut up. There is an undertone of nostalgia realizing that this is what I do too now, 30 years later, when both have sadly passed. Their libraries however remain, in the case of my grandfather, turned into a research library in Paris. (edit: formatting, family anecdote) Also, it's just fun.
siddboots 4y ago
I enjoy to agree with this article but in my belly I know it is just a story we incurable collectors tell to comfort ourselves.
buro9 4y ago
In my apartment we have ~2,500 books (so says LibraryThing). They take a wall 4m long of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the living room, another 2 bookcases (double-width Billy), and another wall in the office (2m floor-to-ceiling). They also overflow to an office at the University and various stacks around the apartment. The thing is though... we've read nearly all of them between us. We probably have only 2% unread at any given time. That's still a good stack of options to read next, still a whole shelf we haven't touched. For time, books feel denser and richer compared to TV and most films. Only music and poetry feels as dense and rich. I wish I could say that there was order to our shelves and there was once several orders! Some parts are by publisher, some parts by theme! Mostly we buy books and add them where there is space. As to wishlists, we purchase when we see things we want and we're not using wishlists. The things we order tend to be obscure and rare - not valuable, just obscure - so if we don't get them at the time we might not see them again. There's something nice about this... books arrive constantly, and that means there's always something exciting to discover. Edit: https://www.librarything.com/ https://www.librarything.com/ is invaluable. We initially got it to help us catalogue things for insurance purposes, but it proves extremely helpful at preventing us from buying the same book twice. Most recently published books only need their barcode scanned or ISBN entered, only the old ones need manual entry.
- noduerme 4y ago
  One of the great things I've come to appreciate about books in the age of digital media is that their physicality gives them a permanence. It's not just the pleasure of reading something on paper... it's that the ideas or stories committed to books are of a naturally higher quality (argue or not) because the writers knew they would be permanent; because six months had passed, and endless edits and revisions; because the authors are dead or hiding. If form can give rise to function, and I believe that it can, then this post and all the forums and blogs in the world serve a purpose totally at odds with the purpose of physical books. So.. I envy your library and hope you'll keep adding to it, and pass on your reverence of it.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    > that their physicality gives them a permanence. For me it's rather it gives them presence rather than permanence. A book on a shelf is filling a space. It's visible. It's available for anyone to have a look. A book on an eink device is hidden. It's invisible. It's barely accessible. You could have thousands of books on an ebook reader and nobody would know it, because they can't see any of it.
Archelaos 4y ago
Umberto Eco remarks somewhere that when he finally decides that he should read a book from his library it seems as if he already knew it. In my words: You get to know the unread books in your personal library a little over time by occasionally browsing through them, looking up a quotation, refering to their table of contents or index when researching a topic, paying more attention when they or their authors are mentioned in another text, ...
politelemon 4y ago
What's the 'digital' equivalent of this and do we digital-only readers, of which there are dozens, have a way of experiencing this? I have no physical books, but lots of ebooks. I sometimes like to open up Calibre and stare at the unread ones and pick what to read next. When there's nothing unread in Calibre I'll go to Goodreads (want to read list).
- skydhash 4y ago
  Apart from the act of consuming content, there is no equivalent. My farther had a somewhat huge library (~700 books), while my collection is digital. The tactility makes it easier to remember the books and rereading it always feels different. I hardly reread fiction books in electronic format, while I’d happily do so with a physical book.
- usrusr 4y ago
  One well known digital equivalent would be Steam Libraries. Not books, but also famous for accumulating endless "perhaps one day" (and surely less romanticized). On the topic of books, my reading effectively stopped when I started reading an "entered the public domain" piece from the kindle app. Without realizing that in print it would be a one foot anthology. Unwilling to give up but also unwilling to press on. Wouldn't have happened in print.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Having too many unread tabs opened
okaleniuk 4y ago
You can look things up surprisingly easy in the books you've read. I guess, this has something to do with physical experiences you had with them. I use my own library as a memory extender regularly. But unread books are useless for this purpose unless they are dictionaries or references. And surely there is no point in keeping them in your own home. A proper place to keep unread books is a public library.
- larve 4y ago
  I make a point to read at least the table of contents and flip each page through when i get a new book, even if i won't read it. Of course I already read the table of contents before buying it, and might have skimmed through the libgen pdf, but I still want to "ingest" the physicality of it. I might fold some corners while flipping through as well. It gives me a map, and I will most certainly remember the book when I need to look up some topic, even though my memory is usually terrible. It takes about 10 minutes and it's well worth it.
- trgn 4y ago
  Another poster has a counter argument and I'd agree. Unread books seep in through osmosis. That unread book that's been sitting there for years, somehow, magically, its content feel familiar when you do pick it up.
l5870uoo9y 4y ago
While I do appreciate visiting homes where you can see the physical library, I do greatly prefer to read on my smartphone. Having all titles available whenever and wherever is a huge luxury (likewise with music streaming services). Not to mention the build in dictionary and the well-made books app on IOS.
- j7ake 4y ago
  Certain books need to be physical. Flipping back and forth through a calculus book is much faster than through smartphone. Smartphone books only work for books that are meant to be read from page 1 to end.
  - Cd00d 4y ago
    Sure, but what percentage of all the books being read in the world right now are calculus books? Or math textbooks? Or textbooks in general? I think you're bringing up an edge case. Fiction and non-fiction books tend to be meant to be consumed front to back. A better edge case would be books with heavy endnotes, but honestly, those are handled better on my Kindle than with a physical book too.
    - j7ake 4y ago
      For technical audiences like hackernews I would expect more textbooks than non textbooks in their library.
martingoodson 4y ago
I’ve accidentally bought several books only to find that I already have them sitting on my bookshelf, unread. I think I need to stop buying books.
thenerdhead 4y ago
I own slightly more books than I have read. Previously I used to pile up books that I’d randomly buy. But one thing I do differently is that I put a couple books in each place that I frequent. A couple in the living room while hanging out with my family, a couple in my office while a slow day at work, a couple in my bedroom for before sleeping, and a couple in a bag/car in case I don’t drive. I’ve found the benefit of surrounding myself with books in this way to make it always guaranteed I will pickup one and read. I think this is different than having an expansive library or piles of books in a room. This helps me read roughly 1-2 books a week and I simply order a new one to replace the book from the respective stack. I’m not a huge DNR person because it makes little sense nowadays that you can’t know enough about a book prior to buying it. I source an extensive backlog of books I’m interested in and rank them by a loose definition of up to 5 star priority based on my interest when I log them down. I feel like we are so spoiled to be able to source very good books and not waste our time with mediocre ones.
ankaAr 4y ago
I liked how Taleb explained how it feels knowing that the more you know, you underestimates even more the value of what you already knows. I have in my house perhaps 42 square meters of bookshelves full of books, sometimes books behind books. Books that I will never read (old books about mouth surgery that I don't know what are doing there). I read what is considered a lot, but it is impossible to read all, and not all topics in my library, made with books from my grandparents (mostly history and engineering) my mom (arts and history) and dad (that is a collector of "things", books are one of those things) Lately I started to buy roleplay books, physical ones and during pandemic, PDFs. I think I will never have the time to play everything I bought. Going back to Taleb arguments summarised by Popova.., yes I think that walking in a library feels like staring at the universe and feeling how little you are, how amazing are those worlds (the books) and how exciting is planing the next adventure. You reads a lot, but still are more to read. And the hungry grows then.
- larve 4y ago
  Is that idea of Taleb that the more you know, the more you underestimate what you already know out of the black swan?
  - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
    <snark> I think Socrates beat him to it by a few years. </snark>
    - larve 4y ago
      If by socrates you mean "the more i know the less i know", I think that's a different idea. I am curious about the "the more you know, the less you think you know, but actually you know quite a bit". An inverted dunning-kruger, sort of.
    - ankaAr 4y ago
      Yes, but I liked how he tied that with books, the emptiness for those books that I will not read. I read a lot, I read nothing yet.
sriku 4y ago
I get a feeling that this holds only for physical books and perhaps not as much for digital books. i.e. Owning more Kindle books doesn't necessarily give you the Dunning-Kruger compensating force (I'm guessing) because these aren't necessarily in your face frequently enough. Personally, I have a mixed physical-digital library. My physical library is packed with books that I think will stand the test of time (roughly speaking) and which I have truly long to read and re-read. I use the digital library for things that I think are more in the "this will pass" category (also roughly speaking, as I only own a digital copy of some real gems like Ousterhout's "philosophy of software" book). Curious about the distribution others use here.
yawboakye 4y ago
Compared to the numbers I’ve seen here, my huge library of ~200 books isn’t huge at all. First lesson, buy all the books. Anyways. I’ve taken the recommendation to own books further and now I own books in languages I don’t speak. Time to read those books is quadratic I guess (French might be easier to learn, I’m not too sure about Koine Greek). My girlfriend doesn’t like it when we walk by the Seine or Tiber (or in fact any river full of indie booksellers) because somehow I’m able to convince myself that this time, just this time, I’ll read these books immediately. Never happened. I’ve devised a rule to calm myself in the meantime: I prioritize reading books of dead authors (figuratively they finished speaking). For authors still living, the book should have been published minimum ten years ago. For me, it’s a great sign that the book will survive a hundred years or so. I’ve seen way too many books expire after a year or two of publication (e.g. all the books on Trump during his administration).
- twobitshifter 4y ago
  Having a library of books in languages you don’t know might be the ultimate reminder of ignorance. I think the author of the article would love that. But what other tools can we use to remind us of our own ignorance. Is there a less volumetric solution that would work as well?
jope12 4y ago
Read until 'Taleb', then stopped reading. The value of not reading articles from people who talk and write mostly garbage.
- snapcaster 4y ago
  He definitely has a lot of dumb ideas, but he also has some pretty solid ideas that have changed the way I thought about the world. That being said, you could probably just read a short summary of Antifragile and Black Swan and get like 90% of the benefit
dloss 4y ago
Or just call the Web your antilibrary.
hombre_fatal 4y ago
These just sound like comforting lies to tell yourself when in reality, for most people, it's probably just vanity, hoarding, and consumerism. Book collecting has more in common with DVD collecting than some aspiration of knowledge. At worst it's no different than a Funko Pop addiction. My cure is to maintain a single shelf of books that I own. Just one shelf. Either a shelf inside a book case or a long shelf that stretches a wall. But either way, once it fills up, you have to being replacing. Can't just go to every book sale and buy mercilessly.
- tomrod 4y ago
  On the flip side, I have most of the books I continue to use after graduate school, even though the material can be found online in most places. Why? 1. Books are way more permanent than Kindle's terms of service, PDFs require fragile digital storage either locally or through a cloud service, etc. 2. I refer to things I read years or even a decade after reading them, and sometimes need a refresher In addition to these, I have classics, scifi, novels I found interesting, and loads of pop-[field] introductory readings for my children to enjoy. It is awesome to hear a six year old talk about what they read in "A Brief History of Time" and let their unbound curiosity and imagination try to expand their understanding of the universe. My parents, somewhat hoarders at that stage of life, had years of Readers Digest and National Geographic when I was young. Having access to decades of print materials that most today would minimalistically confine to the rubbish bin set the direction of my life for exploration and discovery.
- april_22 4y ago
  I also think that buying books somehow creates the feeling of being productive, "oh I have bought this book, I will learn so much and end up becoming a better person", while (when you don't end up reading the book), you just wasted your time and money. Much better to always only buy one book, absorb the knowledge/enjoy the story and only afterwards buy the next.
- ishansharma 4y ago
  The article has a refers to a few sources towards the end including: One such study found that children who grew up in homes with between 80 and 350 books showed improved literacy, numeracy, and information communication technology skills as adults. I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss this as vanity or consumerism.
wseqyrku 4y ago
> The value of owning more books than you can read That'd be a nifty background for your conference calls. Thank you.
FumblingBear 4y ago
A lot of people have already discussed the "presence" that a physical collection of books can have, so I'll touch on personalization. I adore public libraries, but one of the few downsides I find is the inability to mark up the books I borrow. When I own a physical copy of a book, I can highlight things that stand out, jot down notes in the margins, add book darts to the pages where I want to quickly reference upon re-reads, etc. All of those things add a unique history to my particular copy of a book. For me, it's always a joy to buy a used book that has been marked up like I tend to do. There may be many copies of that book, but there's something special about my copy—a shared experience with the previous owners. Sure, an e-book can allow for bookmarks, highlights, and notes, but for some reason it just doesn't feel the same to me. It could even be argued that e-books provide a better experience for revisiting previous notes because of the search functions and the ease at which you can see markings, but there's something just... different about it. E-books lack the same personality that I find my physical books to have. I certainly have a fair share of both e-books and physical, but for every inconvenience that the physical copies have, there's something special about them to me still. Perhaps the inherent flaws with the physical manifestation of the books makes them inherently more relatable to me? A simple reminder that just as people are flawed, things can be too.
- trgn 4y ago
  I love libraries, but I borrow rarely. Not much so that I like to markup, but more that I manhandle books, and they always look like trash after I've gone through them. The physicality of a book really is something dear to me. Dog earring a page to mark a spot, throwing across the bathroom to clear the puddles after reading in the tub, stuffing a paperback in a back pocket when going for a walk, ... Can't do that with a kindle, can't do that with a library book. So buying books it is.
- m463 4y ago
  I have a remarkable 2 tablet, and if you get the pencil you can scribble all over pdf's with your own notes.
  - FumblingBear 4y ago
AlwaysRock 4y ago
I love owning books. I love having a library at home that I can FEEL. I love being able to look at a shelf full books ive read and books I want to read. Honestly the only downside about the space they take up, which I dont really feel like is a downside if you have a little space and nice shelfs, is that moving a lot of books is terrible.
balozi 4y ago
My rule is pretty basic: I don't keep more books than I can carry in a backpack. In practice this translates to just a few cherished books. Everything else I borrow read and return, or buy read then pass it on.
nrclark 4y ago
It's possible to take this way too far. When my grandfather passed away, I helped my father clean out his house. The man had a 5-bedroom 2500 sqft house, basically full wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with books and magazines. Most of them were clearly unread. Getting rid of all of the books was a big effort. Both physically and mentally. Turns out that not too many too many places want to take a bunch of obsolete computer books, and we didn't have the luxury of a couple of years to sell them all on Amazon or something. It was a burden on all of us. Image a week-long bucket brigade from upstairs and downstairs. Every armful got heavier and heavier. In the end, most of them went into the dumpster. Probably $100k worth of books purchased over the years, all obsolete and rotting in a hoarder's trove. I'd guess a couple of tons by weight. I was really struck by the waste of it all, and it's dramatically altered my perception of owning books. If you buy too many books, remember - your habits will eventually become somebody else's problem to deal with. You could be doing anything else with the money instead of wasting it on dead trees that somebody will eventually just have to throw away.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  It was never waste if he enjoyed them, and merely owning is a perfectly legit expression of "enjoy". It was better than our netflix/amazon/audible/disney/spotify/pandora/... media subscriptions.
  - nrclark 4y ago
    Maybe you're right. But it would have been better for all of his family if he'd literally lit that money on fire instead of buying thousands of unread books. At least then, he wouldn't have left us with a huge problem to deal with in his wake.
    - Brian_K_White 4y ago
      I have less than zero sympathy for this sob story, which is exactly appropriately reciprocal to the level of respect and understanding you are granting to your family member. There is absolutely no way to turn someone else's pile of books that you don't approve of into any kind of harm done to you. Not even through this route of death and bequest. Sell the house for whatever it fetches wothout laying a finger on it. Then the horrible books are not your problem. Oh, you want to extract more money from the sale? Or you want to use it yourself? That is still not his obligation. You are essentially saying you wish your parent gave you more, but trying to twist it into somehow they cost you something. Listen to yourself!
QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
Growing up, I loved being able to wander the house and find bookshelves and find bookshelves tucked away in weird places with new things to read. I’ve curated my collection with that in mind for my kids
jimnotgym 4y ago
When we last moved we managed to get down to 6 large shelves and a couple of small shelves of books (if I pretend I don't have a storage unit with a load more in)
codekilla 4y ago
It’s nice to finally have a name for what I suppose is an incurable addiction (maybe 1K books in my library). The most fun for me is buying almost exclusively used books, and then finding interesting inscriptions in them, or when the books come from an interesting place (many have ex-university library marks/stamps). For instance, I have a first printing of Weiner’s The Human Use of Human beings that came from the Redford Arsenal Library.
lampshades 4y ago
I buy books and sometimes only read a few chapters before never picking them up again. I usually still get value out of them and I believe I’d normally value that value at over the $20 it cost to get the book. So, I have a lot of books lying around that are partially read.
ABraidotti 4y ago
To each their own! Before switching to app development, I was an English teacher. I moved several times with a ton of books and art and objects, but that shit is a bear to move with. So I gradually winnowed it all down to just a couple bookshelves and a Kindle. These days, once I read a book, I usually divest myself of it unless it's absolutely amazing or I need to refer to it. I found out my neighbor has made a living by writing, and his house is full of books. It fits his personality as a historian. But I love my mostly bare, white walls. Keeping so many books around would feel to me like keeping a bunch of tabs permanently open in the browser -- ick!
georgeecollins 4y ago
I grew up in a house with a huge library and my wife reads 2-3 books a week, I read a book about every two weeks. So we're readers. We used to have a big book collection and we still have a lot of books in the house. But I switched to kindle about eight years ago and my wife about three years ago. So now our house is decorated with all the books we read or meant to read about ten years ago.
- bkishan 4y ago
  How did you manage the transition? I have tried unsuccessfully to migrate to Kindle a couple of times. Failed both times because I just love the feeling of a book in my hand so much. I'm assuming you had a similar attachment too, but you were able to overcome it?
stakkur 4y ago
For me, the problem is time, and the result that there's a finite number of books I have time left to read. https://jamesgill.net/pagecount/ https://jamesgill.net/pagecount/
kasperset 4y ago
It would be nice to get email of random paragraphs from the ebooks you own. This can be a good reminder of what we don't know or were interested at one point.
mattpallissard 4y ago
I like this idea in theory but in practice it sounds like too much stuff. Unless it's used as a reference manual I give all my books away, once read, to someone I think will enjoy it. I don't tend to accrue books I don't have the time to read. Tangentially related; I throw dust jackets away immediately. It's liberating.
berkeleyjunk 4y ago
Let me present one of my favorite quotes: “What's the point of having a library full of books you've already read?” ― Ray Bradbury
- b3morales 4y ago
  Well, so you can refer to them easily, and revisit them. The experience of reading a good book again after 10+ years is not to be underestimated. Also loaning them out to friends is a pleasant thing.
porknubbins 4y ago
At the same time- When I moved out of the city during covid it was incredibly freeing to not have access to my books. It was kind of like giving myself a blank slate to read new stuff and get out from under the backlog. So maybe another benefit of physical books is when you go away they are not there.

194 points by PikelEmi 4y ago

Newsflash: Those "unread books" are still as "valuable" if they aren't in your library yet because you can always acquire them later when you actually want to read them. That means that the smart thing to do is buy them as you read them, and not hoard them.

Aaargh20318 4y ago
> That means that the smart thing to do is buy them as you read them, and not hoard them. And this is one of the major benefits of e-books: you can postpone the purchase until about 15 seconds before you want to read the book.
ledpup 4y ago
In some places there are public libraries. You can go and sit there for hours everyday and marvel at all the thousands of books you'll never, ever read. Can also be done at bookshops.
skytreader 4y ago
> you can always acquire them later when you actually want to read them That doesn't track with my experience at all for a number of reasons: - Smaller bookstores who may or may not be an official part of the publishing supply chain stock smaller amount of copies of a given book. Once an edition sells out, they might not even have the means to restock/order from a new batch of printing. - Even big chain bookstores have to consider supply and demand economics when stocking their shelves so even them can't guarantee "perpetual availability" of a title. - Not to mention, books go out of print, even way before they go in the public domain. The best way to get a copy is by accident in a thrift shop. If I encounter one I really like, the best move for me would be to buy it then and there, my current reading queue be damned. - Admittedly, acquiring books is easier now due to Amazon, et. al., but we are still very from from being able to acquire a book when you actually want to read them. Not all books are available to buy online!
- brightball 4y ago
  Antique stores are one of favorite sources for books for this reason.
- mbg721 4y ago
  This is a big problem for board games (whose fans also collect large numbers of them on shelves to be seen in interviews). Even well-regarded games often don't get a reprint, so it's not too uncommon for a game that's a few years old to sell for a couple hundred dollars on the secondary market.
Kaibeezy 4y ago
Disagree. If, when you see a book, you have a flash of insight or spark of interest, buy it right then and there. Preserve it as a pilot light.
layer8 4y ago
> when you actually want to read them. The point is that them being present in your library serves as a physical reminder that you might want to read them (whereas otherwise you’d forget about them), and when you decide you want to read them, you can then do it instantly. As others have noted, it also avoids the problem of books having gone out of circulation.

ledpup 4y ago

Ahh... the hubris of modernity's overconsumption. Books, oil, people, food, structures, travelling without moving... We produced and consumed to the point where the world was no longer enough. 'Tis a shame it cost us our civilisation.

Freak_NL 4y ago
If one is going to over-consume anything, let it be books. Minimal environmental impact (reusable and recyclable), and intellectually stimulating. Minimal negative health effects too with a proper posture and as long as you don't read a book while crossing a street.
- ledpup 4y ago
  No, overconsume everything, else you're not doing it right. 8 billion people with 30,000 books each... I'm trying to math it...
  - peterbraden 4y ago
    At that scale you might solve the carbon sequestration problem
  - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
    30,000 is an incredibly large number of books for one person to have. Assuming that each book is a fairly narrow .75 inches and your shelves have 8 layers vertically, you're going to need 234 linear feet of shelves. Assuming your shelves are 3 feet apart with six inches on each side for the shelves, you need 468 square feet of floor space dedicated exclusively to book shelves. That's roughly equivalent to each person in the US using their entire living space for books. I'm pretty sure worldwide, most people would need more than their entire living space.
baxtr 4y ago
Over consuming social media sites is also a thing I hear
4y ago

Brajeshwar 4y ago

I have enough books to read and I do enjoy reading a good number. At most times, I usually have a buffer of about 5-7 physical books, and little about 10-15 in digital unread. The one thing I admire about my father-in-law are his books. He is into literature with lots written and published and still continuing to help other authors at 80+ years of age. I always have seen him amongst books and has a room full of books on the walls, floor, tables, and everywhere. His focus is specifically on folklores from around the world. He know where to go in USA or UK and buy very specific rare books (mostly used). I'm pretty sure he has read thousands and thousands more still unread in his library. He once sent me on an adventure looking for a specific library in Austin, Texas and see if I can buy/steal a particular book. I finally got someone ship a used copy to California, then to India. I like the idea of having unread books around that I know I can read, and others that I can re-read. I'm, however, unsure if this is good or anything advantageous than anyone else that just reads what they want to or need to.

WalterBright 4y ago

I'm constantly amused by the regular spectacle of people being remotely interviewed, and the ubiquitous bookshelf just behind them. I bet they carefully curate the titles in view. I always want to challenge them on if they'd read any. P.S. I have far, far, far more books than I could possibly read.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Foobar8568 4y ago
I second the far far far part. While I have surely close to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblioth%C3%A8que_de_la_Pl%C3%A9iade https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblioth%C3%A8que_de_la_Pl%C..., they won't be shown in any calls, and I read just maybe 5 top. My reason, I see them as investment for later, one day, I'll have time, and if I don't, my daughter will. She already expressed crazily she wanted to read them but at 8, and considering my culture, it's hard to curate some accessible books. Well I know some are clearly not for her (Jin Ping Mei) .
lupire 4y ago
bookspine ad spots are the new banner ad spots.
jon-wood 4y ago
I work with someone who has a bookshelf behind them containing books ordered by spine colour, making a spectrum. It’s very pretty, but I highly doubt she’s read any of them.
- larve 4y ago
  It's actually not the worst organizing system, I often remember books by their color.
  - wikfwikf 4y ago
    But looking for a red book on the red shelf is much harder than looking for a red book on the 'history' shelf, or even on the 'second from the top in the front room where I saw it last' shelf!

grkvlt 4y ago

For those, like myself, who don't quite know enough Greek grammar to work it out properly, I looked up the definition of _Entomophagy_ ... it is derived from the Greek words 'entomon' (insect) and 'phagein' (to eat) and it describes the practice of eating insects; particularly by humans. Good to know in these exciting times!

kaashif 4y ago

Is this article actually just complete nonsense? I can just look at my wishlist to see how many books I want to buy that I haven't bought yet. Then when I want to read one, I buy it. Then I read it. I admit sometimes I hate a book so much I don't finish it and buy another, but I don't think that's the kind of unread book being talked about. Maybe it's not nonsense, actually, is this article just some kind of post hoc justification for impulse buying tons of books?

jgtrosh 4y ago
Without entirely defending the article, its claim seems to be “people tend to read more when they own more”: > [...] studies have shown that book ownership and reading typically go hand in hand to great effect. So, you are unaffected by this claimed phenomenon, good for you; but you haven't really debunked the claim either.
- conanite 4y ago
  Another claim seems to be that a collection of unread books serves as a personal reminder of ignorance, that the un-known always exceeds the known, a kind of "memento ignorantiae" that gives us the humility and motivation to always seek to learn more rather than remain complacently content with the knowledge we have already acquired. And possibly the physicality of a dead-tree library carries this effect more forcibly than an online shopping list. Pardon my latin.
a9h74j 4y ago
> Then when I want to read one, I buy it. In the past I collected half-read books. Now I collect little cards, each with a book title and author written on it. Ordering online is only a search and click away.

secondcoming 4y ago

Having loads of books is great until you have to move home.

mbg721 4y ago
I would think you'd have to have an awful lot of them before it became a problem. Books tend to be pretty small and less oddly-shaped than most other stuff you have to move. They're so efficient to pack that you end up with some really heavy boxes if you're not careful, but after the first one or two, you get the hang of how many to pack.
- Freak_NL 4y ago
  Also, the glorious invention known as the banana box helps. Planning a move? Start collecting banana boxes from supermarkets (they put them out for customers to take for free, because it saves them having to tear them up and fill their paper waste bin with it — don't forget the cardboard inserts for the 'gap' in the bottom of the box). For most books these have a much better shape than ordinary moving boxes, and they are sturdy enough (unlike the former). Free, easy to lift, easy to stack, and it saves the books from damage. Second-hand booksellers who visit bookfairs swear by these boxes.
  - yetanotherloser 4y ago
    This is true. A very different plan that also works is sorting by exact size and packing the smaller sizes very neatly and densely in carrier bags. Push one against each end and then fill the middle so you don't end up pushing a book downwards against the bag end, just books against books. Fill so there's no rattle room and start another row. They form tight blocks that keep the corners safe.
  - mbg721 4y ago
    My dad's big tip was to ask the guys at Kinko's for old printer-paper boxes, for similar reasons.
ekianjo 4y ago

heikkilevanto 4y ago

I have a different policy. I read a lot, but almost exclusively from the public library (which is very good, here in Copenhagen). If I like a book so much that I expect to read it again at least twice, then I may buy a copy. Last time I moved, I gave over half of my books away.

dailykoder 4y ago
This. That's basically what I do too, with a small difference. First off: I usually keep all my text and non-fiction books, but I gave away most fiction. It doesn't matter if I bought it or got it from a public library. A lot of them just go back into another public library or just in front of my doorsteps for people to take em. There are just some all time classics and fiction that struck me the right way at the right time, but I won't read most fiction a second time, so why keep em?
bufordtwain 4y ago
Same here. I don't think accumulating books is a great idea, it uses up trees, costs money and takes up space. Libraries are wonderful.
- april_22 4y ago
  Also much easier to focus and absorb the knowledge
Spooky23 4y ago
I’m fortunate in that I live a few hundred feet from a branch library with access to an awesome inter-library loan program. To me, the ability to pick up a book and just start reading is amazing. Also, my wife is excellent at picking books for me, (better than me!) so it’s a sort of family activity.
LesZedCB 4y ago
for those who haven't heard, Libby is an app that lets you borrow books (epub and audio) from your local library using a library card (in the US, can't verify other countries). it's' super easy and you can add multiple library cards to access several systems. completely free.

suprjami 4y ago

"We love to buy books because we believe we're buying the time to read them." - Warren Zevon https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43290-we-love-to-buy-books-because-we-believe-we-re-buying https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43290-we-love-to-buy-books-...

m463 4y ago
I buy books because I'm imagining something like trinity learning to fly a helicopter in The Matrix... <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoAk7zBTrvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoAk7zBTrvo>
tacon 4y ago
I believe the source of that idea is this famous quote: "Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents." -- Arthur Schopenhauer https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_schopenhauer_121051 https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_schopenhauer_12105...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

larve 4y ago

I own many more books than I will ever read. I also own many books where I have read maybe 2 chapters, usually the first two but not always. Of course, I could download them as PDF, or put them in my wishlist, or keep endless lists of interesting books in my knowledge base, and I do, but the result is very different. 1. the actual physicality of the book ensures that I will not forget it. It is literally there on the shelf. 2. I used to LOVE libraries as a kid. As an adult with a very specific set of interests (computers, ecology, typography), I am usually frustrated by the selection available. What I have now is basically my ideal library, right here at home, and no one is going to bug me about writing inside the books or returning them late. The selection is vast and carefully curated, and I am guaranteed to come out of it delighted when I decide to borrow a few books. Because of that, I also print out and ring-bind a huge amount of PDFs and articles and "in-between" books, to be able to put them up on shelves too. For example, I wanted the other day to do some writing about the fundamentals of software performance, and I gathered the following books, which I plucked for the stuff I needed: - computer systems - bryant & o'hallaron - bpf performance tools - gregg - systems performance - gregg - every computer performance book - wescott - sql performance explained - winand - computer organization and design - hennessy, patterson - computer architecture - hennessy, patterson - algorithms - sedgewick - understanding software dynamics - sites - design of data intensive applications - kleppman - graphics programming black book - abrash (why not!) There is no way a public library would have them all in stock. I also would have had to go there, carry the books back or study on site. all of these books had various amounts of marginalia, folded corners, printouts of papers laid in. This physicality gives me a lot of context information. I often do the same kind of "study session" with PDFs, and it's not hard to find "library" sites online, but it feels much less "intentional" to me. edit: It's probably also an education thing. My grandfather was an art scholar and my uncle an accomplished lawyer. They each wrote many books and articles, and both had gigantic libraries of unread books they would pick from when writing. I grew up with my grandfather at the kitchen table with a stack of books and his boxes of index cards, staring at us kids to please shut up. There is an undertone of nostalgia realizing that this is what I do too now, 30 years later, when both have sadly passed. Their libraries however remain, in the case of my grandfather, turned into a research library in Paris. (edit: formatting, family anecdote) Also, it's just fun.

siddboots 4y ago

I enjoy to agree with this article but in my belly I know it is just a story we incurable collectors tell to comfort ourselves.

buro9 4y ago

In my apartment we have ~2,500 books (so says LibraryThing). They take a wall 4m long of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the living room, another 2 bookcases (double-width Billy), and another wall in the office (2m floor-to-ceiling). They also overflow to an office at the University and various stacks around the apartment. The thing is though... we've read nearly all of them between us. We probably have only 2% unread at any given time. That's still a good stack of options to read next, still a whole shelf we haven't touched. For time, books feel denser and richer compared to TV and most films. Only music and poetry feels as dense and rich. I wish I could say that there was order to our shelves and there was once several orders! Some parts are by publisher, some parts by theme! Mostly we buy books and add them where there is space. As to wishlists, we purchase when we see things we want and we're not using wishlists. The things we order tend to be obscure and rare - not valuable, just obscure - so if we don't get them at the time we might not see them again. There's something nice about this... books arrive constantly, and that means there's always something exciting to discover. Edit: https://www.librarything.com/ https://www.librarything.com/ is invaluable. We initially got it to help us catalogue things for insurance purposes, but it proves extremely helpful at preventing us from buying the same book twice. Most recently published books only need their barcode scanned or ISBN entered, only the old ones need manual entry.

noduerme 4y ago
One of the great things I've come to appreciate about books in the age of digital media is that their physicality gives them a permanence. It's not just the pleasure of reading something on paper... it's that the ideas or stories committed to books are of a naturally higher quality (argue or not) because the writers knew they would be permanent; because six months had passed, and endless edits and revisions; because the authors are dead or hiding. If form can give rise to function, and I believe that it can, then this post and all the forums and blogs in the world serve a purpose totally at odds with the purpose of physical books. So.. I envy your library and hope you'll keep adding to it, and pass on your reverence of it.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > that their physicality gives them a permanence. For me it's rather it gives them presence rather than permanence. A book on a shelf is filling a space. It's visible. It's available for anyone to have a look. A book on an eink device is hidden. It's invisible. It's barely accessible. You could have thousands of books on an ebook reader and nobody would know it, because they can't see any of it.

Archelaos 4y ago

Umberto Eco remarks somewhere that when he finally decides that he should read a book from his library it seems as if he already knew it. In my words: You get to know the unread books in your personal library a little over time by occasionally browsing through them, looking up a quotation, refering to their table of contents or index when researching a topic, paying more attention when they or their authors are mentioned in another text, ...

politelemon 4y ago

What's the 'digital' equivalent of this and do we digital-only readers, of which there are dozens, have a way of experiencing this? I have no physical books, but lots of ebooks. I sometimes like to open up Calibre and stare at the unread ones and pick what to read next. When there's nothing unread in Calibre I'll go to Goodreads (want to read list).

skydhash 4y ago
Apart from the act of consuming content, there is no equivalent. My farther had a somewhat huge library (~700 books), while my collection is digital. The tactility makes it easier to remember the books and rereading it always feels different. I hardly reread fiction books in electronic format, while I’d happily do so with a physical book.
usrusr 4y ago
One well known digital equivalent would be Steam Libraries. Not books, but also famous for accumulating endless "perhaps one day" (and surely less romanticized). On the topic of books, my reading effectively stopped when I started reading an "entered the public domain" piece from the kindle app. Without realizing that in print it would be a one foot anthology. Unwilling to give up but also unwilling to press on. Wouldn't have happened in print.
Apocryphon 4y ago
Having too many unread tabs opened

okaleniuk 4y ago

You can look things up surprisingly easy in the books you've read. I guess, this has something to do with physical experiences you had with them. I use my own library as a memory extender regularly. But unread books are useless for this purpose unless they are dictionaries or references. And surely there is no point in keeping them in your own home. A proper place to keep unread books is a public library.

larve 4y ago
I make a point to read at least the table of contents and flip each page through when i get a new book, even if i won't read it. Of course I already read the table of contents before buying it, and might have skimmed through the libgen pdf, but I still want to "ingest" the physicality of it. I might fold some corners while flipping through as well. It gives me a map, and I will most certainly remember the book when I need to look up some topic, even though my memory is usually terrible. It takes about 10 minutes and it's well worth it.
trgn 4y ago
Another poster has a counter argument and I'd agree. Unread books seep in through osmosis. That unread book that's been sitting there for years, somehow, magically, its content feel familiar when you do pick it up.

l5870uoo9y 4y ago

While I do appreciate visiting homes where you can see the physical library, I do greatly prefer to read on my smartphone. Having all titles available whenever and wherever is a huge luxury (likewise with music streaming services). Not to mention the build in dictionary and the well-made books app on IOS.

j7ake 4y ago
Certain books need to be physical. Flipping back and forth through a calculus book is much faster than through smartphone. Smartphone books only work for books that are meant to be read from page 1 to end.
- Cd00d 4y ago
  Sure, but what percentage of all the books being read in the world right now are calculus books? Or math textbooks? Or textbooks in general? I think you're bringing up an edge case. Fiction and non-fiction books tend to be meant to be consumed front to back. A better edge case would be books with heavy endnotes, but honestly, those are handled better on my Kindle than with a physical book too.
  - j7ake 4y ago
    For technical audiences like hackernews I would expect more textbooks than non textbooks in their library.

martingoodson 4y ago

I’ve accidentally bought several books only to find that I already have them sitting on my bookshelf, unread. I think I need to stop buying books.

thenerdhead 4y ago

I own slightly more books than I have read. Previously I used to pile up books that I’d randomly buy. But one thing I do differently is that I put a couple books in each place that I frequent. A couple in the living room while hanging out with my family, a couple in my office while a slow day at work, a couple in my bedroom for before sleeping, and a couple in a bag/car in case I don’t drive. I’ve found the benefit of surrounding myself with books in this way to make it always guaranteed I will pickup one and read. I think this is different than having an expansive library or piles of books in a room. This helps me read roughly 1-2 books a week and I simply order a new one to replace the book from the respective stack. I’m not a huge DNR person because it makes little sense nowadays that you can’t know enough about a book prior to buying it. I source an extensive backlog of books I’m interested in and rank them by a loose definition of up to 5 star priority based on my interest when I log them down. I feel like we are so spoiled to be able to source very good books and not waste our time with mediocre ones.

ankaAr 4y ago

I liked how Taleb explained how it feels knowing that the more you know, you underestimates even more the value of what you already knows. I have in my house perhaps 42 square meters of bookshelves full of books, sometimes books behind books. Books that I will never read (old books about mouth surgery that I don't know what are doing there). I read what is considered a lot, but it is impossible to read all, and not all topics in my library, made with books from my grandparents (mostly history and engineering) my mom (arts and history) and dad (that is a collector of "things", books are one of those things) Lately I started to buy roleplay books, physical ones and during pandemic, PDFs. I think I will never have the time to play everything I bought. Going back to Taleb arguments summarised by Popova.., yes I think that walking in a library feels like staring at the universe and feeling how little you are, how amazing are those worlds (the books) and how exciting is planing the next adventure. You reads a lot, but still are more to read. And the hungry grows then.

larve 4y ago
Is that idea of Taleb that the more you know, the more you underestimate what you already know out of the black swan?
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
  <snark> I think Socrates beat him to it by a few years. </snark>
  - larve 4y ago
    If by socrates you mean "the more i know the less i know", I think that's a different idea. I am curious about the "the more you know, the less you think you know, but actually you know quite a bit". An inverted dunning-kruger, sort of.
  - ankaAr 4y ago
    Yes, but I liked how he tied that with books, the emptiness for those books that I will not read. I read a lot, I read nothing yet.

sriku 4y ago

I get a feeling that this holds only for physical books and perhaps not as much for digital books. i.e. Owning more Kindle books doesn't necessarily give you the Dunning-Kruger compensating force (I'm guessing) because these aren't necessarily in your face frequently enough. Personally, I have a mixed physical-digital library. My physical library is packed with books that I think will stand the test of time (roughly speaking) and which I have truly long to read and re-read. I use the digital library for things that I think are more in the "this will pass" category (also roughly speaking, as I only own a digital copy of some real gems like Ousterhout's "philosophy of software" book). Curious about the distribution others use here.

yawboakye 4y ago

Compared to the numbers I’ve seen here, my huge library of ~200 books isn’t huge at all. First lesson, buy all the books. Anyways. I’ve taken the recommendation to own books further and now I own books in languages I don’t speak. Time to read those books is quadratic I guess (French might be easier to learn, I’m not too sure about Koine Greek). My girlfriend doesn’t like it when we walk by the Seine or Tiber (or in fact any river full of indie booksellers) because somehow I’m able to convince myself that this time, just this time, I’ll read these books immediately. Never happened. I’ve devised a rule to calm myself in the meantime: I prioritize reading books of dead authors (figuratively they finished speaking). For authors still living, the book should have been published minimum ten years ago. For me, it’s a great sign that the book will survive a hundred years or so. I’ve seen way too many books expire after a year or two of publication (e.g. all the books on Trump during his administration).

twobitshifter 4y ago
Having a library of books in languages you don’t know might be the ultimate reminder of ignorance. I think the author of the article would love that. But what other tools can we use to remind us of our own ignorance. Is there a less volumetric solution that would work as well?

jope12 4y ago

Read until 'Taleb', then stopped reading. The value of not reading articles from people who talk and write mostly garbage.

snapcaster 4y ago
He definitely has a lot of dumb ideas, but he also has some pretty solid ideas that have changed the way I thought about the world. That being said, you could probably just read a short summary of Antifragile and Black Swan and get like 90% of the benefit

dloss 4y ago

Or just call the Web your antilibrary.

hombre_fatal 4y ago

These just sound like comforting lies to tell yourself when in reality, for most people, it's probably just vanity, hoarding, and consumerism. Book collecting has more in common with DVD collecting than some aspiration of knowledge. At worst it's no different than a Funko Pop addiction. My cure is to maintain a single shelf of books that I own. Just one shelf. Either a shelf inside a book case or a long shelf that stretches a wall. But either way, once it fills up, you have to being replacing. Can't just go to every book sale and buy mercilessly.

tomrod 4y ago
On the flip side, I have most of the books I continue to use after graduate school, even though the material can be found online in most places. Why? 1. Books are way more permanent than Kindle's terms of service, PDFs require fragile digital storage either locally or through a cloud service, etc. 2. I refer to things I read years or even a decade after reading them, and sometimes need a refresher In addition to these, I have classics, scifi, novels I found interesting, and loads of pop-[field] introductory readings for my children to enjoy. It is awesome to hear a six year old talk about what they read in "A Brief History of Time" and let their unbound curiosity and imagination try to expand their understanding of the universe. My parents, somewhat hoarders at that stage of life, had years of Readers Digest and National Geographic when I was young. Having access to decades of print materials that most today would minimalistically confine to the rubbish bin set the direction of my life for exploration and discovery.
april_22 4y ago
I also think that buying books somehow creates the feeling of being productive, "oh I have bought this book, I will learn so much and end up becoming a better person", while (when you don't end up reading the book), you just wasted your time and money. Much better to always only buy one book, absorb the knowledge/enjoy the story and only afterwards buy the next.
ishansharma 4y ago
The article has a refers to a few sources towards the end including: One such study found that children who grew up in homes with between 80 and 350 books showed improved literacy, numeracy, and information communication technology skills as adults. I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss this as vanity or consumerism.

wseqyrku 4y ago

> The value of owning more books than you can read That'd be a nifty background for your conference calls. Thank you.

FumblingBear 4y ago

A lot of people have already discussed the "presence" that a physical collection of books can have, so I'll touch on personalization. I adore public libraries, but one of the few downsides I find is the inability to mark up the books I borrow. When I own a physical copy of a book, I can highlight things that stand out, jot down notes in the margins, add book darts to the pages where I want to quickly reference upon re-reads, etc. All of those things add a unique history to my particular copy of a book. For me, it's always a joy to buy a used book that has been marked up like I tend to do. There may be many copies of that book, but there's something special about my copy—a shared experience with the previous owners. Sure, an e-book can allow for bookmarks, highlights, and notes, but for some reason it just doesn't feel the same to me. It could even be argued that e-books provide a better experience for revisiting previous notes because of the search functions and the ease at which you can see markings, but there's something just... different about it. E-books lack the same personality that I find my physical books to have. I certainly have a fair share of both e-books and physical, but for every inconvenience that the physical copies have, there's something special about them to me still. Perhaps the inherent flaws with the physical manifestation of the books makes them inherently more relatable to me? A simple reminder that just as people are flawed, things can be too.

trgn 4y ago
I love libraries, but I borrow rarely. Not much so that I like to markup, but more that I manhandle books, and they always look like trash after I've gone through them. The physicality of a book really is something dear to me. Dog earring a page to mark a spot, throwing across the bathroom to clear the puddles after reading in the tub, stuffing a paperback in a back pocket when going for a walk, ... Can't do that with a kindle, can't do that with a library book. So buying books it is.
m463 4y ago
I have a remarkable 2 tablet, and if you get the pencil you can scribble all over pdf's with your own notes.
- FumblingBear 4y ago

AlwaysRock 4y ago

I love owning books. I love having a library at home that I can FEEL. I love being able to look at a shelf full books ive read and books I want to read. Honestly the only downside about the space they take up, which I dont really feel like is a downside if you have a little space and nice shelfs, is that moving a lot of books is terrible.

balozi 4y ago

My rule is pretty basic: I don't keep more books than I can carry in a backpack. In practice this translates to just a few cherished books. Everything else I borrow read and return, or buy read then pass it on.

nrclark 4y ago

It's possible to take this way too far. When my grandfather passed away, I helped my father clean out his house. The man had a 5-bedroom 2500 sqft house, basically full wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with books and magazines. Most of them were clearly unread. Getting rid of all of the books was a big effort. Both physically and mentally. Turns out that not too many too many places want to take a bunch of obsolete computer books, and we didn't have the luxury of a couple of years to sell them all on Amazon or something. It was a burden on all of us. Image a week-long bucket brigade from upstairs and downstairs. Every armful got heavier and heavier. In the end, most of them went into the dumpster. Probably $100k worth of books purchased over the years, all obsolete and rotting in a hoarder's trove. I'd guess a couple of tons by weight. I was really struck by the waste of it all, and it's dramatically altered my perception of owning books. If you buy too many books, remember - your habits will eventually become somebody else's problem to deal with. You could be doing anything else with the money instead of wasting it on dead trees that somebody will eventually just have to throw away.

Brian_K_White 4y ago
It was never waste if he enjoyed them, and merely owning is a perfectly legit expression of "enjoy". It was better than our netflix/amazon/audible/disney/spotify/pandora/... media subscriptions.
- nrclark 4y ago
  Maybe you're right. But it would have been better for all of his family if he'd literally lit that money on fire instead of buying thousands of unread books. At least then, he wouldn't have left us with a huge problem to deal with in his wake.
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    I have less than zero sympathy for this sob story, which is exactly appropriately reciprocal to the level of respect and understanding you are granting to your family member. There is absolutely no way to turn someone else's pile of books that you don't approve of into any kind of harm done to you. Not even through this route of death and bequest. Sell the house for whatever it fetches wothout laying a finger on it. Then the horrible books are not your problem. Oh, you want to extract more money from the sale? Or you want to use it yourself? That is still not his obligation. You are essentially saying you wish your parent gave you more, but trying to twist it into somehow they cost you something. Listen to yourself!

QuadmasterXLII 4y ago

Growing up, I loved being able to wander the house and find bookshelves and find bookshelves tucked away in weird places with new things to read. I’ve curated my collection with that in mind for my kids

jimnotgym 4y ago

When we last moved we managed to get down to 6 large shelves and a couple of small shelves of books (if I pretend I don't have a storage unit with a load more in)

codekilla 4y ago

It’s nice to finally have a name for what I suppose is an incurable addiction (maybe 1K books in my library). The most fun for me is buying almost exclusively used books, and then finding interesting inscriptions in them, or when the books come from an interesting place (many have ex-university library marks/stamps). For instance, I have a first printing of Weiner’s The Human Use of Human beings that came from the Redford Arsenal Library.

lampshades 4y ago

I buy books and sometimes only read a few chapters before never picking them up again. I usually still get value out of them and I believe I’d normally value that value at over the $20 it cost to get the book. So, I have a lot of books lying around that are partially read.

ABraidotti 4y ago

To each their own! Before switching to app development, I was an English teacher. I moved several times with a ton of books and art and objects, but that shit is a bear to move with. So I gradually winnowed it all down to just a couple bookshelves and a Kindle. These days, once I read a book, I usually divest myself of it unless it's absolutely amazing or I need to refer to it. I found out my neighbor has made a living by writing, and his house is full of books. It fits his personality as a historian. But I love my mostly bare, white walls. Keeping so many books around would feel to me like keeping a bunch of tabs permanently open in the browser -- ick!

georgeecollins 4y ago

I grew up in a house with a huge library and my wife reads 2-3 books a week, I read a book about every two weeks. So we're readers. We used to have a big book collection and we still have a lot of books in the house. But I switched to kindle about eight years ago and my wife about three years ago. So now our house is decorated with all the books we read or meant to read about ten years ago.

bkishan 4y ago
How did you manage the transition? I have tried unsuccessfully to migrate to Kindle a couple of times. Failed both times because I just love the feeling of a book in my hand so much. I'm assuming you had a similar attachment too, but you were able to overcome it?

stakkur 4y ago

For me, the problem is time, and the result that there's a finite number of books I have time left to read. https://jamesgill.net/pagecount/ https://jamesgill.net/pagecount/

kasperset 4y ago

It would be nice to get email of random paragraphs from the ebooks you own. This can be a good reminder of what we don't know or were interested at one point.

mattpallissard 4y ago

I like this idea in theory but in practice it sounds like too much stuff. Unless it's used as a reference manual I give all my books away, once read, to someone I think will enjoy it. I don't tend to accrue books I don't have the time to read. Tangentially related; I throw dust jackets away immediately. It's liberating.

berkeleyjunk 4y ago

Let me present one of my favorite quotes: “What's the point of having a library full of books you've already read?” ― Ray Bradbury

b3morales 4y ago
Well, so you can refer to them easily, and revisit them. The experience of reading a good book again after 10+ years is not to be underestimated. Also loaning them out to friends is a pleasant thing.

porknubbins 4y ago

At the same time- When I moved out of the city during covid it was incredibly freeing to not have access to my books. It was kind of like giving myself a blank slate to read new stuff and get out from under the backlog. So maybe another benefit of physical books is when you go away they are not there.