I have always been a guy with a lot of books. Every once and a while, a post will go floating around the internet about a Japanese term for people who own a lot of books but don’t read them. I don’t remember what that term is, but it’s me. I have read a lot and – some years – do read a lot (although I haven’t been reading as much these days for some reason). But I have way more books than I’ve read, and I sometimes wonder if that’s a problem.
Anyways, I’ve decided that I need to deal with this problem. I don’t want to always have to say, when someone comes into my house and asks if I’ve read all the books on my shelves, “No.” (Or, more commonly, they’ll ask how many of the books I’ve read, and I’ll have to say, “Not many.") More than that, I want to move towards a more minimal existence. If I have a book that just isn’t any good, why am I letting it take up space?
And so I’ve decided that I’m going to try to read through all of the books in my personal library. I don’t actually know how many books that is. I suspect it is north of 3000. Given that in a good year I probably only read 25 books, it would take me at least 120 years to read all of those books. For that reason, I am going to give myself a few parameters:
- I don’t have to finish the book. If I decide to stop reading the book because it’s no good, then I am allowed to do that. However, if I do that I need to seriously consider getting rid of the book. This happened to me when I was reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. I really liked the original series, but some of his later volumes were absolute trash. I may have finished them (I don’t recall now), but I also got rid of them.
- The priority is speed. This means that I am not trying to squeeze every last drop of meaning from the book. I am ok to skim. I want to read these books strategically – especially the non-fiction. Fiction and poetry might be a different story, but at least with the non-fiction, I want to get through the books as quickly as I can. I can always go back and re-read the books that are really affecting.
- Blogging as a way to stay accountable and to keep a record. I read a very interesting post recently about the importance of writing things down in order to remember what you read. I didn’t write down the URL, so ironically cannot remember where I saw it.
- This is related to the first bullet, but I need to emphasize that I need to not be doing this like a student. The goal is quantity not quality and no one is going to grade me. To make an actual go at getting through the library, I need to be “reading” (and I’m ok to even call it “reading” with the scare quotes) way, way more books every year.
Ok. Time to start.