31–40 of 49 posts
A small video of Eco walking through his house library, discussed in the article https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoEuvgT1wBs EDIT: this is actually an extract from a small 3 part documentary that should be visible here http://www.artribune.com/television/2016/02/video-umberto-ec...
I don't envy his books, I envy his shelves.
anything involving Taleb should be taken with a lump of salt OK let's assume Wikipedia is the equivalent of a giant library of unread books. I don't feel any smarter, nor am I am becoming smarter by not reading it. Buying a bunch of books one is never going to read seems like a waste of money. You cant actually learn anything until you read at least some of it..maybe missing the point
At least that's my excuse.
The nature of personal libraries has changed a lot, even in the past couple of decades. In the past you might come across a book and then never see it again, even with some effort to find it. Today, just about any book you are interested in can be purchased on demand.
> Today, just about any book you are interested in can be purchased on demand. There is a sizeable 'black hole' of books that are still in copyright but that are not available digitally or in print. Your only chance for those is flea markets and second hand stores and those are offering fewer and fewer books as well. I would not be surprised if after the whole digitization has run its course that we end up with a lar…
Eventually copyright law will either go away entirely or catch up with reality, and much knowledge that's hidden and presumed lost will be universally available.
Slightly off-topic, but are there any self-proclaimed "power readers" out there who would be interested in technology that improves the practice of reading? (I get super excited whenever reading is mentioned on HN) Taleb is one of my favorites, and I know from his writing that he would be offended by the idea of "reading technology", but I personally believe that reading is one of the best things we can do for ourselves yet the practice hasn't evolved for millennia. As such, I've been experimenting _a lot_ with how software can improve the practice of reading. If that sounds interesting to you at all, I'd love to chat! I'm me@tristanhomsi.com
Love this concept; read it once in Black Swan and it's kind of been stuck in my head ever since. Everyone has an antilibrary of books, so much so that I think the most common response I ever hear to "have you read X?" is "no, but it's on my list!" Everyone who reads has an antilibrary, whether they know it or not. Slightly off-topic, but are there any self-proclaimed "power readers" out there who would be interested…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I buy books, I intend to read them; I expect Eco does too. I think the point is the library of as-yet-unread books is more interesting than the library of already-read books. And it differs from Wikipedia or the Amazon catalog; it's a collection of books that interested me enough to lay out money and shelf space to have nearby.
Yeah...I'm all for this approach, except for the part that assumes you're going to buy a book that you're not going to read immediately. Totally viable and possibly useful...if you have 10x more money than you need. I also appreciated all the oblique suggestions that our appreciation of what we don't know, and how we should temper our certitude, should INCREASE with greater knowledge. Way too many PhD types out there…
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I was half-kidding, but around my parts of the world (Eastern Europe) books are really not that expensive. I'd say the average price I pay for one is 10-15 euros, with the maximum at around 25 euros, and lots of 5 euro books that I buy from antique bookstores. Yeah, were I to put together all the money I paid for books I haven't read yet I would probably gather enough to pay for a decent 7-day vacation in Greece (and…
In some places it may cost more to shelve and house the books than to buy them. (Unless you're happy storing most of your books in boxes.) Probably not if you're in Eastern Europe, but if you're somewhere like San Francisco or London then the cost of the extra space taken up by having a lot of books may well be more than the cost of the books themselves. (I live a little way outside Cambridge, in England. I reckon th…
IMHO having your kids being surrounded by books since an early age it's one of the best ways to convince them that reading and wanting to learn about new stuff is good. I personally put that above them attending a good school, and I've read about lots of parents on HN choosing to purchase more expensive houses only because they were closer to good schools.
I have the equivalent, but in the far more economical form of browser tabs and bookmarks that I will never read.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In some places it may cost more to shelve and house the books than to buy them. (Unless you're happy storing most of your books in boxes.) Probably not if you're in Eastern Europe, but if you're somewhere like San Francisco or London then the cost of the extra space taken up by having a lot of books may well be more than the cost of the books themselves. (I live a little way outside Cambridge, in England. I reckon th…
I think having books in your house is totally worth the price, even in the cases you mention, especially if you have kids. IMHO having your kids being surrounded by books since an early age it's one of the best ways to convince them that reading and wanting to learn about new stuff is good. I personally put that above them attending a good school, and I've read about lots of parents on HN choosing to purchase more ex…
Our daughter reads a whole lot, but as well as growing up surrounded by books she has very bookish genes, and bookish friends, and a library two doors down the road, and so forth, so it's hard to disentangle the causes.