There's also a nice concept called an antilibrary [1]:
> The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, 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 real-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.
At least, it's a good excuse to buy more books that one can read. :)
I mean, don't most - if not all - libraries consist of collections of unread books? No one assumes the head librarian has read everything on the shelves. An antilibrary seems exactly the same as a library to the point of absurdity. Did Pierre Menard come up with this?
This is talking about private libraries, which is just a fancy way of referring to one's personal book collection. If you have a "head librarian", then it's not a private library (unless you're obscenely rich).
University libraries are my favorite. So many volumes of academic work, just waiting to be read. Pick a section, browse and find something interesting about something new.
> The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, 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 real-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.
At least, it's a good excuse to buy more books that one can read. :)
[1] https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antilib...