My Anti library

I first read of the idea of the Antilibrary from Nassim Taleb where in one of his books he talks about the importance of having books you have not yet read and possibly may not end up reading. He refers to Umberto Eco who had a large collection of ten of thousands of books (there is a great video of him walking through his massive library) and how by amassing so many books it encourages potential future reading and for future discovery.

Unlike Umberto Eco whose library was the same size as my house, my own version of an Antilibrary is limited to a solitary Bookcase purchased from Ikea. This bookcase is almost all books I have yet to read, at most maybe 4-5 books on my shelfs I have read before. 

Currently it shelves books unread such as Madame Bovary, The Master and Margarita, The Game of Thrones series (unread and also currently not fully written), Moby Dick, How to Build a Car, Adventures in the Screen Trade, Cities of the Plain, Ulysses, The Petit Prince, The Name of the Rose, Wolf Hall, The Maltese Falcon, The Vegetarian, murder mysteries by Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler's Phillip Malowe novels, James Baldwin, Mishima, Thomas Pynchon, Hemingway, Sally Rooney, The Bronte sisters and much more. 

Whenever I finish a book from my antilibrary’s shelves instead of returning it to the bookcase I choose to donate them and then when gaps begin to appear within the shelves I decide on what unread books I would be interested in potentially reading and buy them to fill these gaps.

Over the course of time the shelves take on a completely different appearance, replaced with entirely different books. New journeys not yet taken, ideas not yet considered. It stands as a humbling reminder of just how much there is I do not know but also as an unlimited number of options curiosity could end up taking me.