Saved by a thought : Anti-Library

I suffered from guilt ridden exits from bookstores off late for I end up buying books more than what I can read, and there is a bigger set of them waiting to be read at home. I am buying them because i can and because i really want to read them. Eight, is the record i recently created in a recent such trip. The differnce between the books I have bought and the once i have read are ever increasing. Even if i include the many that i have partly read.

I have though, wondered how much of a book does one need to read to have actually read it. I mean Non-Fiction here, as that's what i read unless i need a break. Sometimes its enough to read a half of it and you would get your perspective. Now if you really are the kinds who thinks you need to get the full money's/pages'/perspective's worth, you would have a guilt left, still. I would fit in there, most of the time.

I am certainly buying as much as i can afford, and have only felt convinced while doing so. That conviction!yes, that's how i end up buying at the first place! That feeling!, It is very similar to the strength of a brilliant excuse you mind gives you, to call office and make, when you are too sleepy to get up and leave for work in an hour. And the guilt that follows, if you actually happen to bunk that day.

I have sometimes forgotten about some books i bought. A casual look at the book-rack gives me a realisation of combined pride and guilt.

I have seen better reading days, cheaper too. Any book lover who has spent time long enough in Mumbai has not stopped thanking, and now missing, the days when a short walk (Flora Fountain to Churchgate station) , 150 Rupees and healthy negotiation skills would see you heading home with two or three fine titles. You would read them and return a month later to buy more. I earned much much lesser and yet i learned as much or more (and there was no google in my life then, 7 yrs ago).

Recently however i came across a point of view that somewhere rids me of a lot of that bookstore-guilt. Its called an Anti-Library, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb has put it across in his book - The Black Swan. It says that a read book is far less valuable than an unread one, for the books that decorate your shelf is a research tool. Now i may not be researching as much as much as i would be , some day, in a mood to read a certain kind of book...which still makes it associable. One will accumulate more knowledge and more books as they grow older. It would only mean i would be stacking up as many good books i think i should "have" and not necessarily "have read". With age i would have better idea of what is worth having. Concluding therefore that more you know, the more would be the collection of unread books. He therefore called this entire collection an Anti-Library. And he says, which i found the most interesting of lines i have read in recent times (and the reason for this blog) - that a library should contain as much of what you don't know as your financial means :-) ............ and i like that! And can live it for some time.

... The Black Swan was one of the eight books i bought/invested in my last guilt ridden (not anymore) trip to the book shop :)