Ever since I started my graduate work in literature, I’d buy books whereever I could, typically haunting used book stores, thirft stores, or just ordering books online. I’d order books based off of other books. So, for example, when I read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre last year, someone mentioned that Jean Rhys wrote a response, focusing on Bertha Mason. This led me to order Rhys’ Wide Saragosa Sea and read it. After reading Albert Camus’ The Stranger, I learned about Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation, a response to Camus’ novel. While I haven’t picked up Daoud’s novel yet, I plan to do so at some point.

No matter what I read, I always branch off and pick up more books. When I read a book such as Pauli Murray’s memoir Song in A Weary Throat, I think about picking up Patrica Bell-Scott’s The Firebrand and the First Lady, a book detailing Murray’s relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt or Tomiko Brown-Nagin’s Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality to get more framing for Murray’s life and her impact on the Civil Rights Movement. The events of October 7 in Israel led me to get Nur Masalha’s Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History and John Ghazvinian’s American and Iran: A History 1720 to the Present. I picked these books up to help me get a better understanding of the history leading up to October 7.

I get books and let them sit, collecting dust on tables, bookshelves, or elsewhere before I grab them in my hands and crack open the spine. Some say I hoard books, and I must admit that I do have a hoarding tendency for some things, but ultimately my purchasing of books is more closely related to the Japanese word tsundoku, the acquisition of books that remain unread for a while on the shelves, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s term antilibrary. Taleb’s term is a litte different that tsundoku because Taleb argues that these collection of books foster intellectual curiosity and humility.

Taleb references Umberto Eco who separated those who visited him and saw his library 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.” Taleb argues that the antilibrary of accumulated unread books counters the idea of hoarding and “protecting” knowledge from others because it says, overtly, that I do not know what I do not know. He says, “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 devise — a skeptical empiricist.”

While Eco had over 30,000 books in his library, I may have around 1,000–1,5000 at both my home and office. I have not read all of them, but I have them, based on suggestions from other books or references from elsewhere. I have them in order to find something, quickly, if the need arises. I have them to enrich myself, my teaching, and the world I inhabit. They do not go to waste. I just finished Murray’s memoir, and I haven’t read Bell-Scott’s or Brown-Nagin’s books yet, but I have, once I got to certain sections in Murray’s memoir, picked up there books and looked at sections that connected with what Murray wrote. This is the purpose of the antilibrary for me, a means of research materials and intellectual advancement at one’s fingertips.

We may argue that the internet provides the same thing, the ability to quickly search and find information. However, when we use the internet, we typically do so in a quick fashion, seeking cursory information or facts through Wikipedia or other sites. We rarely take the time to really dive, book-length, into a topic. We get bombarded with quick takes or quick facts, eschewing any nuance. When I pick a book off of my shelf, I get more of these things, more of the ability to closely examine and think about a topic rather than scrolling through for a second then moving on to Duolingo or Royal Match.

Eco describes books as utilitarian tools that benefit us. Comparing them to medicine, he said, “we understand that it is good to have many [books] at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the ‘medicine closet’ and choose a book.” There are books I go back to, again and again, when I need them. They soothe me, heal me, and transport me back to specific times and places that I want to remember. They act as medicine for my soul, both curing and strengthening me.

Eco also argues that when one buys “only one book,” reads it, and then gets rid of it by donating it or giving it away the person treats the books with a “consumer mentality,” and the book becomes nothing more that “a commodity” to be bought and sold when the need arises, not as a vessel of knowledge to be experienced, revered, and shared with others. In this manner, the book becomes transactional, losing its value for the reader. It becomes fleeting, nothing more than a diversion. Yes, books serve as diversions, and they serve as entertainment, but they prvide so much more. They provide knowledge and understanding.

I probably won’t read all of the books on my shelf before I die. I can only read about 70–80 books a year, and that means I may have about 2,000 books left to read, if that. However, I do know that I will continue to purchase book and add them to my antilibrary because they are important. I don’t want to hoard them, walling them off from others. I want them to inform me so I can impart their information to others, no matter what form it may take. Books are important. They are essential. They are connections, medicine, and so much more.

What are your thoughts? Please let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @silaslapham.