The Value of Unread Books: Why They Matter More Than the Read Ones
In his book The Black Swan(2007), the Lebanese-American writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb recounts his discussion with the late Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco. In this discussion, Taleb uses Eco to illustrate his concept of the “anti-library,” which is about the value of unread books.
Paraphrasing their discussion, Taleb pays a visit to the professor’s home. While in the presence of this great writer, Taleb noticed a huge and well-stocked library in the house and then asked how he built such an impressive personal library, which, according to Taleb, contained thirty thousand books.
Umberto describes two types of questions by those who visit his library- one question is about how impressive the library is and how long he has been building this library, but the other one is more interesting, at least to prove a point with regards to Taleb’s concept- ‘anti-library’, and the question is how many books of the thirty thousand books has he read to which Umberto would respond not a lot- half of the library consists of unread books.
I buy lots of books, an average of 4 to 5 in a calendar month. This means between 48 and 60 books are added to my library annually. However, the highest number of books I read was 36 books a year, and my lowest was 15 books.
By looking at these numbers, you don’t have to be a maths genius to calculate that there are lots of unread or, at best, half-read books in my library.
Initially, this caused me immense self-criticism, that I was wasting my money on books I was not reading; what is the point of buying books you are not reading or reading them cover to cover?
But this all changed when I read the discussion between Taleb and Prof Umberto. Why? Because I realised that the value of a book mainly lies in its unknown knowledge, but when this is known to the reader, that value is no longer there.
Let me unpack this further. Let us say you bought two books today, both dealing with different domains of knowledge you were interested in. You read one of the books, which means you have acquired one piece of knowledge but have one more to learn. Weigh this on a value scale and ask yourself which book is now more valuable. It is a no-brainer; the value lies in the unread book because it contains the knowledge you lack and need to gain to fulfil your original needs.
Of course, the read book still retains some value since it can serve as a reference, resource, library for future re-reading, etc, but the reader has now acquired its content.
My value argument for unread books is not necessarily similar to the well-promoted Japanese concept of “Tsundoku,” which means to stock up to read- buy more books you can read. The idea has both benefits and drawbacks.
The benefit is that you have more access to more knowledge if you pile up more books, but the drawback, which often dwarfs the benefits, is that you may end up with piles of books that you will end up not reading- this can be a case of wasted resources.
Unread books are valuable because they hold knowledge we haven’t learned yet; they remind us of the things we still have to discover. Compare this to the already-read books, which no longer hold the same potential for new knowledge.
Happy Reading
