Something encouraging for those of us with piles of yet unread books

[Etienne]

“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encylopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and 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 as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight read-estate market allows 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.
We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So this tendency to offend Eco’s library sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations. People don’t walk around with anti-resumes 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. Just as we need to stand library logic on its head, we will work on standing knowledge itself on its head. Note that the Black Swan comes from our misunderstanding of the likelihood of surprises, those unread books, because we take what we know a little too seriously.
Let us call this an antischolar - someone who focuses on the unread books, and makes an attempt not to treat his knowledge as a treasure, or even a possession, or even a self-esteem enhancement device - a skeptical empiricist.”

Quoted from Taleb's Black Swan at:
http://ruchir75.blogspot.com/2008/01/umberto-ecos-anti-library.html

[Tallon]

I have two bookshelves, one for unread books and one for read books. Also, i seem to have books skattered all over the place in every room, i have a miniature library in my toilet.

[JBI]

Fine then, I wonder how many he hasn't read.

[stlukesguild]

30,000!!??!!:eek: I am but an amateur. I have some 3,000 books shelved around my personal library (I always wanted a library and considering the number of books shelved... piled in stacks on desks and on the floor... and just randomly strewn about the room I am currently in I cannot think to call it anything but a library). There are great numbers of books even in this limited library that I stare at frequently and think, "I've got to get around to reading that one."

[Kafka's Crow]

Taleb's book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is absolutely amazing. This quotation is from the chapter titled, I think, 'Eco's Library' or something. I really enjoyed this book and it sits quite high in my list of favorite non-fiction books. My library of unread books is growing faster than anything in this household. I think I am on the right track then, eh?

[Etienne]

Fine then, I wonder how many he hasn't read.

Hehe, smartass :D

[andave_ya]

WOW!! That's wonderful, but what if your unread books are primarily fiction? It makes perfect sense to have the nonfiction stuff as a research library, but what is the point of having an unread fiction book?

btw, I can't claim to have all of my fiction books read. Out of a library of 300+ I have about 40-50 unread. (kind of weird, Eco has 30,000; stluke has 3000, and andave has 300 :lol:)

[JBI]

Hehe, smartass :D

Not really. The truth is, we are all just curious if the library is just for show, or if he actually has read all, or even a large portion of those books. I myself have very few books in my library, yet have read many more books than people with libraries 10x the size. the ideal is to have a large personal library of books that you have read, if they are all just piles of unread books, then there really is no point to having them, other than the aesthetics of having a large personal library, like a piece of expensive artwork.

I know Eco collects rare books, so there is the aesthetics of that, but if he hasn't read most of the books, they are just there for decoration.

That being said, from what I can gather about Eco he must read at an incredibly fast rate - therefore I wouldn't be surprised if he, over his long life, has read the majority of them - I'm just curious, like everyone else.

[Jozanny]

WOW!! That's wonderful, but what if your unread books are primarily fiction? It makes perfect sense to have the nonfiction stuff as a research library, but what is the point of having an unread fiction book?

I am probably one of the few around here who does buy literary criticism to keep so that I have research material, not that I'm Eco, or even luke. I have two bookcases stacked mostly with expensive hardback editions I'll never part with, an additional closet with three shelves, one for my own published articles and poetry (and more rarely, fiction), the rest for periodicals and even more books, three more crates behind my bed, one crate under a man's shower chair, my uncle's dead father's, which I can't use, more paper and books on that chair, and in my manual wheelchair as well. Does make e-book and hard drive storage attractive, doesn't it?

I am not sure Eco's point is all that post-modern, in the tangible sense: Written language is something of a physical reality, and needs to be stored, but I'd need to read the whole essay.

[Etienne]

Not really. The truth is, we are all just curious if the library is just for show, or if he actually has read all, or even a large portion of those books. I myself have very few books in my library, yet have read many more books than people with libraries 10x the size. the ideal is to have a large personal library of books that you have read, if they are all just piles of unread books, then there really is no point to having them, other than the aesthetics of having a large personal library, like a piece of expensive artwork.

I know Eco collects rare books, so there is the aesthetics of that, but if he hasn't read most of the books, they are just there for decoration.

That being said, from what I can gather about Eco he must read at an incredibly fast rate - therefore I wouldn't be surprised if he, over his long life, has read the majority of them - I'm just curious, like everyone else.

Yes, yes, I do agree with you, but do remember that he is not just a "reader" but also a specialist in actually more than one field. So there is no way he is going to read all the new thesis appearing at any point or all the books on the subject, but keeping them can be very handy, especially as often some of these specialized books might be edited just once.

That being said, I see absolutely no problem at keeping a library for show. It's a nice piece of furniture, and it's nice when people come by and can choose a book to read that you can lend them too.

Also, I have no doubt he has read a great many of them, and since, when reading specialized books, you often need only a chapter or two, that probably accounts for many of his books as well.

[RG57]

We have two areas for books, fiction and non-fiction. Most of the fiction is mine, I can normally remember what I've read but to help at a glance I put a small self-adhesive dot on the spines. It may sound crazy but it works for me.

[stlukesguild]

Speaking for myself... certainly not for Eco... I can say that my ability to purchase books that I wish to read exceeds the speed a which I may read them. Certainly... one might logically suggest that I slow down on my purchases... and I have... Many books which I recognize that I may freely purchase at any time... the Dickens novels which I do not own or the like... I have put off purchasing. Many other books, however, I end up buying because I could not turn them down... they were a rare find... a book I have been looking for for some years, a new acclaimed translation or a new volume of poetry that I recognize will rapidly go out of print. It is rare that any book goes onto my shelves without some cursory perusal at the very least. Neither am I likely to keep a book if I imagine that I will never read it again. My reading has taught me that much of literature involves a dialog between an author and earlier writers. I cannot begin to tell of the times in which my reading of one writer has led me to explore the writing of another.

[JBI]

Speaking for myself... certainly not for Eco... I can say that my ability to purchase books that I wish to read exceeds the speed a which I may read them. Certainly... one might logically suggest that I slow down on my purchases... and I have... Many books which I recognize that I may freely purchase at any time... the Dickens novels which I do not own or the like... I have put off purchasing. Many other books, however, I end up buying because I could not turn them down... they were a rare find... a book I have been looking for for some years, a new acclaimed translation or a new volume of poetry that I recognize will rapidly go out of print. It is rare that any book goes onto my shelves without some cursory perusal at the very least. Neither am I likely to keep a book if I imagine that I will never read it again. My reading has taught me that much of literature involves a dialog between an author and earlier writers. I cannot begin to tell of the times in which my reading of one writer has led me to explore the writing of another.

Romantic - I accuse you!

[andave_ya]

I am probably one of the few around here who does buy literary criticism to keep so that I have research material, not that I'm Eco, or even luke. I have two bookcases stacked mostly with expensive hardback editions I'll never part with, an additional closet with three shelves, one for my own published articles and poetry (and more rarely, fiction), the rest for periodicals and even more books, three more crates behind my bed, one crate under a man's shower chair, my uncle's dead father's, which I can't use, more paper and books on that chair, and in my manual wheelchair as well. Does make e-book and hard drive storage attractive, doesn't it?


Not really, no :). That sounds fantastic -- books everywhere! That's what I want, eventually, though I suppose that won't happen until I finish high school and college and even a bit further down the road :).

As to special editions, I rarely fork over the money for those. I just get whatever edition I find (if it's a translation, though, I do try to research to see how good it is before getting it) and read the book. Then again, there's the library :brow:

[Bitterfly]

I read that remark in one of Eco's (funny, I think) essays, but I really can't remember which one. :(

I totally agree with him, of course, and even if I don't yet have 30000 books, it's my aim to collect as many and read as many before I die! I just wonder how big his house is... Half my library at least is made up of books I haven't read entirely. It's wonderful to possess books, especially if you work with them - so many things to check up all the time, to re-read. Libraries are just frustrating - I never feel like giving their books back! And if you're a compulsive book-buyer, it's difficult to resist a good bargain...
And when you have plenty in advance, there'll never be a dull rainy day when you have nothing to read. :)

[brandons34]

with the advent and the internet and tools like google the use for unread books is no longer necessary. I can see the benefit of having nonfiction and reference books on hand, but if I want to learn about something there usually is not 1 book that covers it all. Instead, cross referencing multiple online sources and encyclopedias is quicker and far more useful.

I liked his idea that an unread book is more useful than a read book, but for purely informational purposes it is no longer required to have a hard copy in your library, it may even be wasteful and time consuming.

[Etienne]

with the advent and the internet and tools like google the use for unread books is no longer necessary. I can see the benefit of having nonfiction and reference books on hand, but if I want to learn about something there usually is not 1 book that covers it all. Instead, cross referencing multiple online sources and encyclopedias is quicker and far more useful.

I liked his idea that an unread book is more useful than a read book, but for purely informational purposes it is no longer required to have a hard copy in your library, it may even be wasteful and time consuming.

Online sources? Encyclopedias? For an high school homework you are talking about, certainly? Books useless? Argh... see the Wikipedia topic...

[mortalterror]

"You are sitting in front of a computer that would have filled a skyscraper had it been built in 1956. You have terabytes of the world's accumulated wisdom at your fingertips via Google. You have a college education in your pocket. Einstein, Feynman, Gödel, Jung, the Wachowski Brothers, Turing, Fermi, Crick and Watson have all blazed an intellectual trail for you to follow. With all this going for you, your major contribution to society so far consists of a message board post theorizing that the castaways on Lost might be in Purgatory.

About 400 years ago, before the discovery of electricity and only 150 years after the invention of the printing press, a barely literate German cobbler came up with the idea that God was a binary, fractal, self-replicating algorithm and that the universe was a genetic matrix resulting from the existential tension created by His desire for self-knowledge.

Clearly, someone's been slacking off."
-quote taken from Rotten.com's article on Jakob Bohme
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/mad-science/jakob-bohme/

Dante owned about fifty books, and Shakespeare had something like a hundred in his possession. The difference is that they picked them with care and knew what was inside of them. It's all a matter of emphasis, reading deeply, or reading shallowly, pointed, or broadly. Should we specialize or diversify? In their day, a book was a major purchase chosen with care. Nowadays there is such diffusion, so much noise, too many voices and books to read. It's possible for the first time to be at once well read and poorly educated. We are overexposed and it takes training to sort out what is important from what is not. A large library is more a show of great wealth than it is the sign of a rich mind. I am reminded of Henry David Thoreau who would stroll alone through the Massachusetts woods, and returned late one day to discover that his only book, a Greek edition of Homer, had been stolen much to his relief. The things we own end in owning us, and a man's books should be the world proper.

[andave_ya]

"You are sitting in front of a computer that would have filled a skyscraper had it been built in 1956. You have terabytes of the world's accumulated wisdom at your fingertips via Google. You have a college education in your pocket. Einstein, Feynman, Gödel, Jung, the Wachowski Brothers, Turing, Fermi, Crick and Watson have all blazed an intellectual trail for you to follow. With all this going for you, your major contribution to society so far consists of a message board post theorizing that the castaways on Lost might be in Purgatory.

About 400 years ago, before the discovery of electricity and only 150 years after the invention of the printing press, a barely literate German cobbler came up with the idea that God was a binary, fractal, self-replicating algorithm and that the universe was a genetic matrix resulting from the existential tension created by His desire for self-knowledge.

Clearly, someone's been slacking off."
-quote taken from Rotten.com's article on Jakob Bohme
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/mad-science/jakob-bohme/

Dante owned about fifty books, and Shakespeare had something like a hundred in his possession. The difference is that they picked them with care and knew what was inside of them. It's all a matter of emphasis, reading deeply, or reading shallowly, pointed, or broadly. Should we specialize or diversify? In their day, a book was a major purchase chosen with care. Nowadays there is such diffusion, so much noise, too many voices and books to read. It's possible for the first time to be at once well read and poorly educated. We are overexposed and it takes training to sort out what is important from what is not. A large library is more a show of great wealth than it is the sign of a rich mind. I am reminded of Henry David Thoreau who would stroll alone through the Massachusetts woods, and returned late one day to discover that his only book, a Greek edition of Homer, had been stolen much to his relief. The things we own end in owning us, and a man's books should be the world proper.

:thumbs_up That is very true. Have you by any chance read anything by John Berger? He's an art critic but his words are applicable to your point as well. Berger says that art has been cheapened because of the widespread reproductions in varying degrees of quality. He says that because we can reproduce art and therefore change its context, we lose its real meaning. The original is now valuable because of its monetary worth rather than its meaning and emotional impact.

question: who's the barely literate German cobbler?

[mortalterror]

:thumbs_up That is very true. Have you by any chance read anything by John Berger? He's an art critic but his words are applicable to your point as well. Berger says that art has been cheapened because of the widespread reproductions in varying degrees of quality. He says that because we can reproduce art and therefore change its context, we lose its real meaning. The original is now valuable because of its monetary worth rather than its meaning and emotional impact.

question: who's the barely literate German cobbler?

I haven't read John Berger, but he sounds like a smart man. The German cobbler is Jakob Bohme and I included a link below the quote to the article about him.

"The fox knows many tricks; the hedgehog one good one." -Archilochus

[Bitterfly]

"
Dante owned about fifty books, and Shakespeare had something like a hundred in his possession. The difference is that they picked them with care and knew what was inside of them.

Not sure you can say that - had they lived now, when books are relatively cheap and easy to come by, they might have owned more. I don't think you can compare, when contexts are so different. There's also another major difference between then and now: there are far many more good books to collect nowadays - translations from the Classical authors, and works from all the centuries that followed Dante and Shakespeare.

But I agree with you on the need to choose between specialisation and diversification. It's a pity that diversification is often identified with shallowness, though - what happened to intellectual curiosity? I'm rather envious of the humanists, for instance, who could go up several roads of knowledge. And I don't think that choosing to concentrate your intelligence on the use of commas in Victorian literature will make you better educated than if you loiter in Renaissance England one day and post-modernism the next.


The things we own end in owning us, and a man's books should be the world proper.

Agree with the first part of your sentence, but the second is a bit trite. In my opinion, books (not only fiction) help you read the world. Without them, your experience remains immediate and non-reflective.

[Pecksie]

Taleb's book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is absolutely amazing. This quotation is from the chapter titled, I think, 'Eco's Library' or something. I really enjoyed this book and it sits quite high in my list of favorite non-fiction books. My library of unread books is growing faster than anything in this household. I think I am on the right track then, eh?

Same happens to me... Husband beginning to feel scared (and cramped) :alien:

[prendrelemick]

The influence of my good wife means that I'm restricted to just four shelves. Three and a half of these contain favourites that I can't bear to let go. On the remaining half shelf are my transient selection, books I have read, liked, but will have to go someday to make room for a new favourite. When the last shelf is full I shall have to re-negotiate.

Most of my current reading is done from library books.

[DeadAsDreams]

Honestly im not sure how he rationalizes this. Knowledge is only useful if we know it. The value of a book is what it puts in our head, not the untapped potential of it.

[stlukesguild]

That is very true. Have you by any chance read anything by John Berger? He's an art critic but his words are applicable to your point as well. Berger says that art has been cheapened because of the widespread reproductions in varying degrees of quality. He says that because we can reproduce art and therefore change its context, we lose its real meaning. The original is now valuable because of its monetary worth rather than its meaning and emotional impact.

I haven't read John Berger, but he sounds like a smart man.

He might not be all that smart... but rather just well-read. The idea that he writes of was thrown around far earlier by the critic, Walter Benjamin in his seminal essay, "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Benjamin, however, somewhat embraced the mechanical reproduction as a part of the process of democratizing art... removing the "cult status" of the original art object... and placing it firmly within the image. Unfortunately... as a writer... Benjamin seemingly lacked the ability to understand that the subtle elements of the original art object... the echoes of the artist's hand, the subtle nuances of color, the relationship of the art object to the body of the viewer, the surface marks, transparencies and opacities of paint are all as essential to the experience of the art object and the exact words are to a poet. Undoubtedly Berger is closer to the mark is suggesting that mechanical reproduction has cheapened art... in the sense that many... even many artists... have no real understanding or respect for the differences between a mechanical reproduction and an original art object. Mechanical reproduction has also cheapened art by so bombarding us with images that it now seems that only the image of increasing sensation can gain any recognition... and many seemingly confuse true "originality"... an honest expression of the artist's perceptions/thoughts/feelings with "novelty".

[crystalmoonshin]

30,000!!??!!:eek: I am but an amateur. I have some 3,000 books shelved around my personal library (I always wanted a library and considering the number of books shelved... piled in stacks on desks and on the floor... and just randomly strewn about the room I am currently in I cannot think to call it anything but a library). There are great numbers of books even in this limited library that I stare at frequently and think, "I've got to get around to reading that one."

Wow!!! 3000 and you call yourself an amateur? The number of my books hasn't even reached 100, though I've read a fairly good number of books already thanks to the libraries in our university.

[Mortis Anarchy]

That is very true. Have you by any chance read anything by John Berger? He's an art critic but his words are applicable to your point as well. Berger says that art has been cheapened because of the widespread reproductions in varying degrees of quality. He says that because we can reproduce art and therefore change its context, we lose its real meaning. The original is now valuable because of its monetary worth rather than its meaning and emotional impact.

I haven't read John Berger, but he sounds like a smart man.

He might not be all that smart... but rather just well-read. The idea that he writes of was thrown around far earlier by the critic, Walter Benjamin in his seminal essay, "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Benjamin, however, somewhat embraced the mechanical reproduction as a part of the process of democratizing art... removing the "cult status" of the original art object... and placing it firmly within the image. Unfortunately... as a writer... Benjamin seemingly lacked the ability to understand that the subtle elements of the original art object... the echoes of the artist's hand, the subtle nuances of color, the relationship of the art object to the body of the viewer, the surface marks, transparencies and opacities of paint are all as essential to the experience of the art object and the exact words are to a poet. Undoubtedly Berger is closer to the mark is suggesting that mechanical reproduction has cheapened art... in the sense that many... even many artists... have no real understanding or respect for the differences between a mechanical reproduction and an original art object. Mechanical reproduction has also cheapened art by so bombarding us with images that it now seems that only the image of increasing sensation can gain any recognition... and many seemingly confuse true "originality"... an honest expression of the artist's perceptions/thoughts/feelings with "novelty".

On the topic of John Berger, I'm reading his book Ways of Seeing for my journalism class. Oh, and he uses Benjamin as one of his main sources etc. So that is probably where a lot of his ideas were formulated. Anyways, there is this section where he discusses that women in art are nearly always painted to flatter men. Do you agree with that? I can't say I do...this is what he states.

“The essential way of seeing women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed. Women are depicted in a quite different way from men—no because the feminine is different from the masculine—because the ideal spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of woman is designed to flatter him.” P.64, Ways of Seeing

[Niamh]

I've only around 600-700 books, but all of mine are catagorised so if i'm looking for a drama, i know where to look, same with spiritualism, paranormal, mythology, fiction, fantasy, childrens lit, poetry, classics, archaeology, history, geology, media, cooking, down right random, and all my antiquarian books.
I have a good pile i need to read, bout 30 books, and i only off loaded a few recently to charity.

[kelby_lake]

I have a vague categorisation...I used to arrange my Cds in chronological-preferrential order.

[Niamh]

Its the bookseller in me that has me catagorising!

[Schokokeks]

I've only around 600-700 books

Excuse me, "only" ?!? :eek2: But ok, you're a professional :nod:.
I own about 150, and I completely stopped buying books unless absolutely necessary about 2 years ago. Heaven help me if I were cut off from the fabulous university library...

[crystalmoonshin]

Thanks to book sales and stuffs, I was able to buy a lot of books last year. So now I have more than 100 books, though I haven't read all of them yet, coz the majority of them are either in French or in Spanish and I only read a few pages of those, not the entire book as I feel I am not yet fully prepared to do so. But after this semester, I plan to really read everything. (I hope that by reading French and Spanish novels, I will also get to improve my vocabulary...)

[Mag Master 21]

Taleb's book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is absolutely amazing. This quotation is from the chapter titled, I think, 'Eco's Library' or something. I really enjoyed this book and it sits quite high in my list of favorite non-fiction books. My library of unread books is growing faster than anything in this household. I think I am on the right track then, eh?

I've read his book, Fooled By Randomness, and it was pretty good. I've been meaning to check out The Black Swan.


And I'm also addicted to buying books... My monthly tally for books purchased has breached 50.

[tinselmoon]

I read that remark in one of Eco's (funny, I think) essays, but I really can't remember which one. :(

I totally agree with him, of course, and even if I don't yet have 30000 books, it's my aim to collect as many and read as many before I die! I just wonder how big his house is... Half my library at least is made up of books I haven't read entirely. It's wonderful to possess books, especially if you work with them - so many things to check up all the time, to re-read. Libraries are just frustrating - I never feel like giving their books back! And if you're a compulsive book-buyer, it's difficult to resist a good bargain...
And when you have plenty in advance, there'll never be a dull rainy day when you have nothing to read. :)

Recently I was looking at bookgroup websites, where people get together locally and study books, and these sites give a lot of resumes of some of these books that are read. When I tried to get hold of them, I couldn't. Our local library fiction section is so depressing, seems to be aimed at the Womens Weekly Fiction crowd, and the bookshops never seem to have what I am looking for. I suppose I need to learn how to get books online, might even get them cheaper that way. There was a book called Julius Winsome that they listed, and I couldn't find it in either the library or local book shop.

It feels as though I just can't access books, and don't really know where to begin looking. The bookgroup idea I gave up on after a couple of days, it sounds great but I couldn't make any contact.