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Learning Books that you've already read are far less valuable than unread ones. In recent years I have shed my life-long collections of vinyl records, CDs and mix-tapes. But I remain firm in my defense of a massive collection of books, many of them just skimmed, not read. The Japanese even have a word for the habit of acquiring books but letting them pile up without reading them: tsundoku (積ん読). It seems that my madness has a reason. "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." Article: Building an Antilibrary: the Power of Unread Books
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