Appreciating the anti-library

There is so so much to read and so little time. This week’s post will be short and to that point.

I find myself often falling into feelings of frustration that can accompany realizations of the vastly overwhelming number of articles, blogs, and books that I would love to read. And not only that I would “love” to read, but that I feel like I “should” read. I suspect most, if not all of you, feel the same.

The feeling that “I haven’t read enough yet” used to keep me from putting my own thoughts out there. But of course, the more we read, the more we realize there is to read. There will never be an “enough” and there shouldn’t be. What we do read, and what we don’t read, shape our own ideas and ways of thinking about problems. I love thinking about how the unique collection of what one person has read (and not read) influences their thinking and ideas. How boring and unproductive life would be if we could all read everything we should.

I am re-reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007 by Random House), and wanted to share his antilibrary idea here — to help you feel a little better about all you will never read. (He goes even further — to antiresumes and antischolars — but I’ll leave those alone for today).

Read books are far less valuable that unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

Page 1. Taleb (2007). The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Random House, New York.

Happy reading and anti-reading.