6 ms·

Building an antilibrary: the power of unread books

64 points by surprisetalk 3y ago

u385639 3y ago
Generational transfer is very important to me and the main reason I build my "antilibrary". 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!
BillyTheMage 3y ago
> People don’t walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced I kind of like this idea.
- BeetleB 3y ago
  "Built without Machine Learning" is something I like to boast about.
  - urthor 3y ago
    Ha. This is excellent.
- shric 3y ago
  Yes, an anti-résumé listing only what one has not studied or experienced but limited to things that one has even the vaguest aspirations of one day studying or experiencing would be a great thing to have.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- jeffwass 3y ago
  Back in the late 90’s when I was looking for a job out of college, I gave a resume to a company, and they called me up for a first round interview and mentioned a few keywords from my resume that were of interest, but some of those keywords were definitely not on my resume. It was some kind of OCR fail at their end. But it got my foot into the door. 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.
  - jbl0ndie 3y ago
    I'd be curious to try that for beating the terrible resumé screening tools that so many company seem to be using these days.
  - ravetcofx 3y ago
    Who was doing OCR keyword scans of resumes in the late '90s? IBM or Microsoft?? That seems like it would have been expensive and a lot of resources for most other companies
_benj 3y ago
> a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool 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 :-)
- ternaryoperator 3y ago
  TLPI? TAOE?
  - tacitusarc 3y ago
    The Linux Programming Interface and The Art of Electronics, perhaps?
    - ternaryoperator 3y ago
      Thanks, appreciated! Hard to know for sure.
karaterobot 3y ago
I have a lot of bookshelves along a wall of my house. People say "wow, how many of those books have you read?" and I say "almost none of them". 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.
- soupfordummies 3y ago
  Your whole comment is exactly me to a “t”. 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!
  - skydhash 3y ago
    Same thing, except that my collection is digital (due to shipping issue). Any subject that interests me, I collect some recommendations and get all the books in my library. And just like the parent comment, I usually do a quick browse (1 or 2 minutes). That to have some kind of metadata in memory, that I have a book that talk about this specific thing. 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.
    - 3y ago
sfpotter 3y ago
I've had an anti-library for a good long while now, and what I've noticed is that occasionally I'll realize that I book I have is the perfect primer for a subject I need to get quickly up to speed on. This is usually only because I've spent some time thumbing through it already since it's been on my shelf for years. I'll subsequently devour the book and feel a great deal of satisfaction at the stars having aligned like this. It happens rarely but it's a nice treat, and always feels like taking a knowledge power pill.
- dvaun 3y ago
  Consider it your professional library.
fabianholzer 3y ago
Around 2005 I started to fill my amazon wish list with all the books I where liked the idea of having read them. It didn't take very long until I had two dozen or so wish lists (non-fiction subdivided by coarse categories of my interests, fiction subdivided by genres). 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.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  I have long gotten used to the idea that I cannot remotely read all my books in my years remaining. It bothers me only a little. When I feel like reading, I have a curated collection to choose from. A large fraction of it is deep dive material, so went I want more than the shallow tripe on the internet, it's available.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    Curation is the key. I also curate my media (movies and music albums) library. And it's more enjoyable to put on an album you like and purposely listen instead of launching a random playlist. Or browse Netflix.
  - davidthewatson 3y ago
    I realized that I'd finally accepted my habit of reading Ken Wilbur and others sideways an odd paragraph at a time when I saw your comment here. Thank you for the idea that my nonlinearity is ok with a tip of the hat to leo buscaglia.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      I once had a debate with a friend who maintained that the nukes dropped on Japan did not cause the Japanese to surrender, that the declaration of war by the Soviet Union did. I remembered I had two history books covering the Japanese surrender in detail, with proper cites and everything, which thoroughly supported the former.
Duanemclemore 3y ago
This is excellent. Another aspect that the author doesn't even point out is that if you're reading things that don't suggest more than one next thing worth reading... It probably wasn't that good. Basically you should be shooting for a kind of intellectual / inspiration R0 value > 1.
scubbo 3y ago
Can I instead maintain an anti-index of all the books that _would_ be in my antilibrary if I had infinite money and space, and which I would purchase (or, more likely, look up) if and when the need arises? Because otherwise this seems impractical (though I adore the spirit!).
kristianp 3y ago
My antilibrary is a growing folder of books downloaded from z-library.
korginator 3y ago
The habit of accumulating books is one I find stress inducing. The best decision I made over the years is to give away most of my books except for a few non-technical books and some old comics. There's less clutter at home, less baggage occupying room in the mind, and less stress telling myself that I have to make time to read those books because I paid for them.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
namingisharder 3y ago
I like the idea, but the terminology “antilibrary” really bothers me. It isn’t in any way a negation, inverse, opposite or dual of a library. 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.
andsoitis 3y ago
”Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.” What a wonderful way to praise curiosity and intellectual humility.
viburnum 3y ago
I read that Taleb book when it came out and was inspired to build up a library. I mostly regret it. I used to be motivated to finish books because then I would allow myself to buy more. Now I read less and have a ton of books about things I lost interest in fifteen years ago.
dhosek 3y ago
I have my books divided into two sections. The books I’ve read and those I’ve not yet read (or that I have read but desire to re-read). The latter currently takes up a bit less than 18 80cm Billy bookcase shelves. Allowing for incoming books,¹ I estimate I can clear a shelf a year, so I should get this down to zero before I die. I also keep a list of books that I plan to check out from the library, which currently has 1,255 books on it. This would be 25 years of reading if I never add anything to it, but if books go on at the same rate that they go onto my to-read shelves, it’s more like 50 years, and I doubt that I have 50 years of reading life ahead of me. ⸻ 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.
stefantalpalaru 3y ago
[dead]
kqr2 3y ago
https://www.azquotes.com/author/4536-Desiderius_Erasmus https://www.azquotes.com/author/4536-Desiderius_Erasmus When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. Your library is your paradise.
light_hue_1 3y ago
The main part this leaves our is your digital vs physical library. 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.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

64 points by surprisetalk 3y ago

Generational transfer is very important to me and the main reason I build my "antilibrary". 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!

BillyTheMage 3y ago

> People don’t walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced I kind of like this idea.

BeetleB 3y ago
"Built without Machine Learning" is something I like to boast about.
- urthor 3y ago
  Ha. This is excellent.
shric 3y ago
Yes, an anti-résumé listing only what one has not studied or experienced but limited to things that one has even the vaguest aspirations of one day studying or experiencing would be a great thing to have.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jeffwass 3y ago
Back in the late 90’s when I was looking for a job out of college, I gave a resume to a company, and they called me up for a first round interview and mentioned a few keywords from my resume that were of interest, but some of those keywords were definitely not on my resume. It was some kind of OCR fail at their end. But it got my foot into the door. 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.
- jbl0ndie 3y ago
  I'd be curious to try that for beating the terrible resumé screening tools that so many company seem to be using these days.
- ravetcofx 3y ago
  Who was doing OCR keyword scans of resumes in the late '90s? IBM or Microsoft?? That seems like it would have been expensive and a lot of resources for most other companies

_benj 3y ago

> a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool 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 :-)

ternaryoperator 3y ago
TLPI? TAOE?
- tacitusarc 3y ago
  The Linux Programming Interface and The Art of Electronics, perhaps?
  - ternaryoperator 3y ago
    Thanks, appreciated! Hard to know for sure.

karaterobot 3y ago

I have a lot of bookshelves along a wall of my house. People say "wow, how many of those books have you read?" and I say "almost none of them". 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.

soupfordummies 3y ago
Your whole comment is exactly me to a “t”. 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!
- skydhash 3y ago
  Same thing, except that my collection is digital (due to shipping issue). Any subject that interests me, I collect some recommendations and get all the books in my library. And just like the parent comment, I usually do a quick browse (1 or 2 minutes). That to have some kind of metadata in memory, that I have a book that talk about this specific thing. 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.
  - 3y ago

sfpotter 3y ago

I've had an anti-library for a good long while now, and what I've noticed is that occasionally I'll realize that I book I have is the perfect primer for a subject I need to get quickly up to speed on. This is usually only because I've spent some time thumbing through it already since it's been on my shelf for years. I'll subsequently devour the book and feel a great deal of satisfaction at the stars having aligned like this. It happens rarely but it's a nice treat, and always feels like taking a knowledge power pill.

dvaun 3y ago
Consider it your professional library.

fabianholzer 3y ago

Around 2005 I started to fill my amazon wish list with all the books I where liked the idea of having read them. It didn't take very long until I had two dozen or so wish lists (non-fiction subdivided by coarse categories of my interests, fiction subdivided by genres). 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.

WalterBright 3y ago
I have long gotten used to the idea that I cannot remotely read all my books in my years remaining. It bothers me only a little. When I feel like reading, I have a curated collection to choose from. A large fraction of it is deep dive material, so went I want more than the shallow tripe on the internet, it's available.
- skydhash 3y ago
  Curation is the key. I also curate my media (movies and music albums) library. And it's more enjoyable to put on an album you like and purposely listen instead of launching a random playlist. Or browse Netflix.
- davidthewatson 3y ago
  I realized that I'd finally accepted my habit of reading Ken Wilbur and others sideways an odd paragraph at a time when I saw your comment here. Thank you for the idea that my nonlinearity is ok with a tip of the hat to leo buscaglia.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    I once had a debate with a friend who maintained that the nukes dropped on Japan did not cause the Japanese to surrender, that the declaration of war by the Soviet Union did. I remembered I had two history books covering the Japanese surrender in detail, with proper cites and everything, which thoroughly supported the former.

Duanemclemore 3y ago

This is excellent. Another aspect that the author doesn't even point out is that if you're reading things that don't suggest more than one next thing worth reading... It probably wasn't that good. Basically you should be shooting for a kind of intellectual / inspiration R0 value > 1.

scubbo 3y ago

Can I instead maintain an anti-index of all the books that _would_ be in my antilibrary if I had infinite money and space, and which I would purchase (or, more likely, look up) if and when the need arises? Because otherwise this seems impractical (though I adore the spirit!).

kristianp 3y ago

My antilibrary is a growing folder of books downloaded from z-library.

korginator 3y ago

The habit of accumulating books is one I find stress inducing. The best decision I made over the years is to give away most of my books except for a few non-technical books and some old comics. There's less clutter at home, less baggage occupying room in the mind, and less stress telling myself that I have to make time to read those books because I paid for them.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

namingisharder 3y ago

I like the idea, but the terminology “antilibrary” really bothers me. It isn’t in any way a negation, inverse, opposite or dual of a library. 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.

andsoitis 3y ago

”Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.” What a wonderful way to praise curiosity and intellectual humility.

viburnum 3y ago

I read that Taleb book when it came out and was inspired to build up a library. I mostly regret it. I used to be motivated to finish books because then I would allow myself to buy more. Now I read less and have a ton of books about things I lost interest in fifteen years ago.

dhosek 3y ago

I have my books divided into two sections. The books I’ve read and those I’ve not yet read (or that I have read but desire to re-read). The latter currently takes up a bit less than 18 80cm Billy bookcase shelves. Allowing for incoming books,¹ I estimate I can clear a shelf a year, so I should get this down to zero before I die. I also keep a list of books that I plan to check out from the library, which currently has 1,255 books on it. This would be 25 years of reading if I never add anything to it, but if books go on at the same rate that they go onto my to-read shelves, it’s more like 50 years, and I doubt that I have 50 years of reading life ahead of me. ⸻ 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.

stefantalpalaru 3y ago

[dead]

kqr2 3y ago

https://www.azquotes.com/author/4536-Desiderius_Erasmus https://www.azquotes.com/author/4536-Desiderius_Erasmus When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. Your library is your paradise.

light_hue_1 3y ago

The main part this leaves our is your digital vs physical library. 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.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]