Umberto Eco's vast home library in Milan, a treasure trove of over 50,000 books and archives, was acquired by the Italian government and split: his main modern collection went to the University of Bologna for scholars, while his rare "ancient" books (on magic, alchemy, etc.) went to Milan's Braidense Library. Eco famously advocated for an "antilibrary" of unread books, viewing them as a symbol of knowledge yet to be explored, a concept central to his philosophy on learning and curiosity.
Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love my tsundoku.
Taleb laid out the concept of the antilibrary in his best-selling bookThe Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. He starts with a discussion of the prolific author and scholar Umberto Eco, whose personal library housed a staggering 30,000 books.
When Eco hosted visitors, many would marvel at the size of his library and assumed it represented the host’s knowledge — which, make no mistake, was expansive. But a few savvy visitors realized the truth: Eco’s library wasn’t voluminous because he had read so much; it was voluminous because he desired to read so much more.
My friends, be proud of your antilibrary.
And for those who are curious, the referenced "tsundoku" is 積読, which is a mashup of the word for "to pile up" (as in how dust does on the blade of a disused fan, or snow on a mountainside) and 読 (book). Maybe from 読書 which is a fancy way of saying "to read" (and then dropping the second kanji)?
(It's actually kind of a pun? "tsunde oku" is "to pile up" with an auxiliary verb that connotes something being done "for the time being." If you drop the "e" (common in casual speech) you get "tsundoku" and swap out that "doku" for the one that means "book" and it remains "tsundoku" but in Japanese has changed from 積んどく to 積ん読.)
Granted, I'm sure there is some braggadocious bibliomaniac out there who owns a collection comparable to a small national library, yet rarely cracks a cover. Even so, studies have shown that book ownership and reading typically go hand in hand to great effect.One such study found that children who g...
“[Studies] suggest reading can reduce stress, satisfy social connection needs, bolster social skills and empathy, and boost certain cognitive skills. And that's just fiction!”
I see so many posts on booklr where people joke about or actually shame themselves for having a bigger TBR pile than books that they have read.
Good news from this NY Times article! There’s a word for the books you’ve purchased but not actually read: “tsundoku” in Japanese or “antilibrary” (I like the Japanese word better too). And it turns out that it’s good to have more books than you’ll ever read!
So, I did the math: Out of the 267 books I currently own, 188 I have read fully. 46 I have not read. And 33 I have read partially.
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 don’t 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 menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and non-dull. 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.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
More students (and teachers) should grasp this concept. School is a great thing, to be sure, but so is learning on your own. If we can bring that type of learning into our schools… oh, what a time we could have.
But it’s like Jim Henson said: “Your kids… don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”
One of the things we’ve tried hard to do in our house is to make it a…
What our shelves of unread books teach us about ourselves
The Japanese practice of “tsundoku” bestows joy and lasting benefits to those who make books an important part of their lives.
Neuropsych — August 12, 2025 | Kevin Dickson
Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb believes surrounding ourselves with unread books enriches our lives as they remind us of all we don’t know. Unread books also prompt us to read more, which studies show can reduce stress and boost cognitive skills.
I love books. If I go to the bookstore to browse, I walk out with three books I probably didn’t know existed beforehand. I buy second-hand books by the bagful at the Friends of the Library sale and can’t help but peek into any neighborhood book exchange I pass. Even the smell of old books grips me, that faint aroma of earthy vanilla that wafts up at you when you flip a page.
The only problem is that my book-collecting habit outpaces my ability to actually read them, leading to FOMO and the occasional pangs of guilt over the many unread volumes piling up on my shelves. Sound familiar?
However, it’s possible my guilt is entirely misplaced. According to statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, these unread volumes represent what he calls an “antilibrary,” and he believes our antilibraries aren’t signs of laziness or some intellectual failing.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Umberto Eco signs a book. You can see a portion of the author’s vast antilibrary in the background.
Living with an antilibrary
Taleb laid out the concept of the antilibrary in his best-selling book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. He starts with a discussion of the prolific author and scholar Umberto Eco, whose personal library housed a staggering 30,000 books.
When Eco had visitors over, they would marvel at the size of his library and assumed it represented their host’s collected knowledge — which, make no mistake, was expansive. But a few savvy visitors realized the truth: Eco’s library wasn’t voluminous because he had read so much; it was voluminous because he desired to read so much more.
Eco stated as much. Doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation, he found he could only read about 25,200 books if he read one book a day, every day, between the ages of ten and eighty. A “trifle,” he laments, compared to the million books housed in any university library.
Drawing from Eco’s example, Taleb deduces:
Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. [Your] 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. [Emphasis original]
Maria Popova, whose post at Brain Pickings summarizes Taleb’s argument beautifully, notes our tendency is to overestimate the value of what we know, while underestimating the value of what we don’t know. Taleb’s concept flips this tendency on its head.
An antilibrary’s value stems from how it challenges our self-estimation by providing a constant, niggling reminder of all we don’t know. The titles lining my own shelves remind me that I know little to nothing about cryptography, the Norman invasion, Italian folklore, illicit drug use in the Third Reich, and whatever entomophagy is. (Don’t spoil it; I want to be surprised.)
“We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended,” Taleb writes. “It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So this tendency to offend Eco’s library sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations.”
Shelves of unexplored ideas propel us to continue reading, continue learning, and never be comfortable that we know enough. They provide the foundation for a healthy and robust intellectual humility.
Those who lack intellectual humility may enjoy a sense of pride at having conquered their personal book collection, but such a library is no more alive or useful than a trophy mount. It becomes an “ego-booting appendage” for decoration alone. Not a living, growing resource we can learn from until we are 80 — and, if we are lucky, a few years beyond.
Book swap attendees will no doubt find their antilibrary/tsundoku grow.
Tsundoku
I love Taleb’s concept, but I must admit I find the label “antilibrary” a bit lacking. For me, it sounds like a plot device in a knockoff Dan Brown novel. Kevin Mims also doesn’t care for Taleb’s label.
His objection, however, is a bit more practical than mine:
“I don’t really like Taleb’s term ‘antilibrary.’ A library is a collection of books, many of which remain unread for long periods of time. I don’t see how that differs from an antilibrary.”
His preferred label is tsundoku. Tsundoku is a loanword from Japanese for the stack — or, more honestly, stacks — of books you’ve purchased but haven’t yet read. Its morphology combines tsunde-oku (letting things pile up) and dokusho (reading books).
The word originated in the late 19th century as a satirical jab at teachers who owned books but didn’t read them. While that is opposite of Taleb’s point, today the word carries no stigma in Japanese culture that I know of.
It differs from bibliomania, which is the obsessive collecting of books for the sake of the collection, not their eventual reading & enjoyment.
The value of tsundoku
While I’m sure there are some bibliomaniacs out there who own collections comparable to a small national library, yet rarely crack a cover, most people I know who own a lot of books also read them. In fact, studies have shown book ownership & reading typically go hand in hand to great effect.
One such study found children who grew up in homes with between 80 and 350 books showed improved literacy, numeracy, information communication technology skills as adults. Exposure to books, the researchers suggested, boosts these cognitive abilities by making reading a part of life’s routines and habits.
And other studies have also shown reading can provide a bevy of benefits. They suggest reading can reduce stress, satisfy social connection needs, bolster social skills and empathy, and boost certain cognitive skills.
And that’s just fiction!
Reading nonfiction is correlated with success and high achievement, helps us better understand ourselves and the world, and, most importantly, gives you a competitive edge at pub trivia.
In an article on the subject, Jessica Stillman ponders if unread books act as a kind of counter to the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias leading ignorant people to assume their knowledge or abilities are more proficient than they truly are.
Since people are not prone to enjoying reminders of their ignorance, their unread books may push them toward, if not mastery, then at least an ever-expanding understanding of competence.
“All those books you haven’t read are indeed a sign of your ignorance. But if you know how ignorant you are, you’re way ahead of the vast majority of other people,” Stillman writes.
Whether you prefer the term antilibrary, tsundoku, or something else entirely, the value of an unread book is simply its power to get you to read it.
