The Importance Of Unread Books

If you’re a reader and have a good number of books in your room, how many times has somebody walked into your room and asked “Wow, you’ve got so many books. How many of them have you actually read?”

When somebody asks you a question like this, how do you feel?

Have you stopped yourself from buying books because of the 4-5 unread books lying in your desk or couch?

We’ve all been there. I’ve definitely been there, quite a lot of times. I always feel the need to buy books despite having a pile of unread books on my shelf that I have named “The Wall of Shame” (like The Hall of Fame). I do feel the guilt teasing my heart and my brain quickly calculating how better I can spend the money that I am about to wash down the drain. Buying books despite knowing you’ve loads of unread books is a guilty pleasure for me.

What Unread Books Offer?

In Black Swan, a popular non-fiction, Nassim Taleb (the author) talks about Umberto Eco and his relationship with books which has stuck to my heart ever since I read it first.

Umberto Eco is a great Italian scholar, philosopher and most importantly a continuous researcher who explores a variety of topics. He’s known to have classified people into two types.

• The large majority who ask him - “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have. How many of these books have you read?”
• The very few who actually understand that a private library is more of a research tool rather than a mere display to talk high about one’s intellect.

Nassim Taleb also coined the term “Anti-Library” for all the unread books and argues “The more you know, the larger the rows of unread books”

Taleb goes further and says “People don’t walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it’s the job of their competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did.”

This simply means he’s using the construct of unread books as a visual representation of everything you don’t know. And just as much as you know what you know, you would also like to know everything you don’t know. Sadly, it’s been our human nature to undervalue what we don't know and overvalue what we do know, thereby miscalculate the possibility of surprises.

A Personal Note

Having got a huge collection of books right next to my bed, I have found myself in situations where I would just stare at my wall of shame, pick a book and read it over a weekend. Sometimes you’d be in the mood to read a certain book, and when you have that book right in front of you, you pick it and read it without a second thought. I have also found myself in situations where a random pick from the wall of shame has helped me rewire my brain and helped me understand different concepts better.

To know what you don’t know is a huge strength and an anti-library helps you with this.

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