>he has more unread books than read in his bookshelf

>>9447399
It means he hasn't got around to reading them all, spergpai.

>>9447435
wew, lad

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 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.

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>>9447510
>tfw too smart to read the books I buy

>>9447510
Hey Nassim

>>9447510
This sounds actually extremely comfy.

>read a book
>the book quotes another book
>find the passage in that book
>read it
>search in your library summaries of that book to put that passage in a context
>return to your book and with a still weak but present notion of that secondbook you've checked

In libraries it would take hours.

>>9447642
www.google.com

>>9447399

>tfw I would need an apocalyptic event that would wipe out electricity, and by extension the internet/etc, to be sufficiently free of distractions to read all the books I own

last year i just read one book and it was a comic.i just come here for shitposting

>>9447650
Too distracting for actually literate academics. Nothing beats a book, and science is on our side. Enjoy your lowered attention span.

Most people do this. The REAL evil is buying books just to display them and never planing to read them.

>>9447766
You'll fit right in.

>>9447510
>Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.

That is untrue.

>>9447766
same. I'm on my way to finishing my first book this year

>>9447399
>he holds onto every book he finishes
aside from books that are good for reference and books you keep coming back to, there's no reason to have so much shelf waste aside from pseud posturing. your to-read should equal or exceed the ones you have read. If they don't you clearly don't read enough to have the need for it.

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>>9447510
>this damage control

>>9447399
Why would you hoard books you already have read? At a certain point you gotta clear stuff out m8.

>>9447399
I find it very difficult to be presented with an interesting book and not want to buy it if it's related to something I'm reading. Some of these purchases are pie in the sky but others are done at times when I have a bit more cash and genuinely want to read them in the future.

The way I see it is simple, the more unread books in my personal library, the more books I will eventually read. Pretty simple desu

>>9447510
Woah, how can /lit/ ever recover?

>>9447510
Your argument is invalid; the internet is a thing, you know.

>>9447642
It's very comfy. I was reading an essay on Homer which made reference to the Iliad, Odyssey, several works of Plato, Herodotus, a pre-socratic philosopher, and a fable of Aesop—I got the pleasure of pulling books out of my library so as to read the original quote and the surrounding context; it was supremely comfy.