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

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.<p>The thing is though... we&#x27;ve read nearly all of them between us. We probably have only 2% unread at any given time. That&#x27;s still a good stack of options to read next, still a whole shelf we haven&#x27;t touched.<p>For time, books feel denser and richer compared to TV and most films. Only music and poetry feels as dense and rich.<p>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.<p>As to wishlists, we purchase when we see things we want and we&#x27;re not using wishlists. The things we order tend to be obscure and rare - not valuable, just obscure - so if we don&#x27;t get them at the time we might not see them again. There&#x27;s something nice about this... books arrive constantly, and that means there&#x27;s always something exciting to discover.<p>Edit: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.librarything.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.librarything.com&#x2F;</a> 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.

&quot;We love to buy books because we believe we&#x27;re buying the time to read them.&quot; - Warren Zevon<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;quotes&#x2F;43290-we-love-to-buy-books-because-we-believe-we-re-buying" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;quotes&#x2F;43290-we-love-to-buy-books-...</a>

It&#x27;s possible to take this way too far. When my grandfather passed away, I helped my father clean out his house.<p>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.<p>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&#x27;t have the luxury of a couple of years to sell them all on Amazon or something.<p>It was a burden on all of us. Image a week-long bucket brigade from upstairs and downstairs. Every armful got heavier and heavier.<p>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&#x27;s trove. I&#x27;d guess a couple of tons by weight.<p>I was really struck by the waste of it all, and it&#x27;s dramatically altered my perception of owning books.<p>If you buy too many books, remember - your habits will eventually become somebody else&#x27;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.

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.

I&#x27;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&#x27;d read any.<p>P.S. I have far, far, far more books than I could possibly read.

A lot of people have already discussed the &quot;presence&quot; that a physical collection of books can have, so I&#x27;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.<p>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.<p>For me, it&#x27;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&#x27;s something special about my copy—a shared experience with the previous owners.<p>Sure, an e-book can allow for bookmarks, highlights, and notes, but for some reason it just doesn&#x27;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&#x27;s something just... different about it.<p>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&#x27;s something special about them to me still.<p>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.

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.<p>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&#x27;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&#x2F;steal a particular book. I finally got someone ship a used copy to California, then to India.<p>I like the idea of having unread books around that I know I can read, and others that I can re-read. I&#x27;m, however, unsure if this is good or anything advantageous than anyone else that just reads what they want to or need to.

I own slightly more books than I have read. Previously I used to pile up books that I’d randomly buy.<p>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&#x2F;car in case I don’t drive.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I feel like we are so spoiled to be able to source very good books and not waste our time with mediocre ones.

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.

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, ...

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.<p>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&#x27;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 &quot;things&quot;, books are one of those things)<p>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.<p>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.

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.<p>These days, once I read a book, I usually divest myself of it unless it&#x27;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!

Ahh... the hubris of modernity&#x27;s overconsumption. Books, oil, people, food, structures, travelling without moving... We produced and consumed to the point where the world was no longer enough.<p>&#x27;Tis a shame it cost us our civilisation.

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&#x2F;stamps). For instance, I have a first printing of Weiner’s The Human Use of Human beings that came from the Redford Arsenal Library.

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&#x27;t bought yet.<p>Then when I want to read one, I buy it. Then I read it.<p>I admit sometimes I hate a book so much I don&#x27;t finish it and buy another, but I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s the kind of unread book being talked about.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s not nonsense, actually, is this article just some kind of post hoc justification for impulse buying tons of books?

You can look things up surprisingly easy in the books you&#x27;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.<p>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.

For those, like myself, who don&#x27;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 &#x27;entomon&#x27; (insect) and &#x27;phagein&#x27; (to eat) and it describes the practice of eating insects; particularly by humans. Good to know in these exciting times!

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.<p>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.

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.

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

Newsflash: Those &quot;unread books&quot; are still as &quot;valuable&quot; if they <i>aren&#x27;t</i> in your library yet because you can always acquire them later when you actually want to read them.<p>That means that the smart thing to do is buy them as you read them, and not hoard them.

For me, the problem is time, and the result that there&#x27;s a finite number of books I have time left to read. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jamesgill.net&#x2F;pagecount&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jamesgill.net&#x2F;pagecount&#x2F;</a>

These just sound like comforting lies to tell yourself when in reality, for most people, it&#x27;s probably just vanity, hoarding, and consumerism. Book collecting has more in common with DVD collecting than some aspiration of knowledge. At worst it&#x27;s no different than a Funko Pop addiction.<p>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&#x27;t just go to every book sale and buy mercilessly.

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.<p>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.<p>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).

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&#x27;t know or were interested at one point.

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.

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&#x27;re readers.<p>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.

What&#x27;s the &#x27;digital&#x27; equivalent of this and do we digital-only readers, of which there are dozens, have a way of experiencing this?<p>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&#x27;s nothing unread in Calibre I&#x27;ll go to Goodreads (want to read list).

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.<p>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 <i>ideal</i> 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.<p>Because of that, I also print out and ring-bind a huge amount of PDFs and articles and &quot;in-between&quot; books, to be able to put them up on shelves too.<p>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:<p>- computer systems - bryant &amp; o&#x27;hallaron<p>- bpf performance tools - gregg<p>- systems performance - gregg<p>- every computer performance book - wescott<p>- sql performance explained - winand<p>- computer organization and design - hennessy, patterson<p>- computer architecture - hennessy, patterson<p>- algorithms - sedgewick<p>- understanding software dynamics - sites<p>- design of data intensive applications - kleppman<p>- graphics programming black book - abrash (why not!)<p>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.<p>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 &quot;study session&quot; with PDFs, and it&#x27;s not hard to find &quot;library&quot; sites online, but it feels much less &quot;intentional&quot; to me.<p>edit: It&#x27;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.<p>(edit: formatting, family anecdote) Also, it&#x27;s just fun.

I like this idea in theory but in practice it sounds like too much stuff. Unless it&#x27;s used as a reference manual I give all my books away, once read, to someone I think will enjoy it. I don&#x27;t tend to accrue books I don&#x27;t have the time to read.<p>Tangentially related; I throw dust jackets away immediately. It&#x27;s liberating.

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.

&gt; The value of owning more books than you can read<p>That&#x27;d be a nifty background for your conference calls. Thank you.

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.<p>So, I have a lot of books lying around that are partially read.

My rule is pretty basic: I don&#x27;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.

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

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&#x27;t have a storage unit with a load more in)

Let me present one of my favorite quotes:<p>“What&#x27;s the point of having a library full of books you&#x27;ve already read?”<p>― Ray Bradbury

Or just call the Web your antilibrary.

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&#x27;t necessarily give you the Dunning-Kruger compensating force (I&#x27;m guessing) because these aren&#x27;t necessarily in your face frequently enough.<p>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 &quot;this will pass&quot; category (also roughly speaking, as I only own a digital copy of some real gems like Ousterhout&#x27;s &quot;philosophy of software&quot; book).<p>Curious about the distribution others use here.

Read until &#x27;Taleb&#x27;, then stopped reading. The value of not reading articles from people who talk and write mostly garbage.