antilibrary

I have too many books, especially in digital form. Whenever a book piques my interest, I immediately seek it out, acquire it by any means possible, and at least read its table of contents. This of course results in piles of books that I will never manage to read. As my knowledge expands, the pile keeps getting bigger. This is not an unknown phenomenon for knowledge seekers. Umberto Eco had a huge library, more than 30,000 books. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book The Black Swan, describes Eco’s library as the antilibrary: [Umberto Eco] separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others – a very small minority – who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know …. You will accumulate more knowledge and more…