On the Quiet Logic of Unread Shelves: It’s Not Hoarding If It’s Books

Buying and reading: Separate Worlds

There is this misunderstanding between readers and non-readers: that people buy books to read them. This can – at best – lead to curiosity about a person who buys a book even though their “my next book” shelf is already buckling under the weight of waiting books. Irritation and incomprehension – that can be dealt with somehow. However, there may also be an unwillingness or resentment if you share an account and/or shelves.

Of course, you buy a book to read it. Just not immediately. Maybe not soon. Sometimes not for years to come.

The explanation is simple: buying and reading books are two completely different things. Sometimes there is a close temporal connection between the two; often, there is not.

It’s important to have lots of books (but not just any books!) because – and here comes the second explanation to resolve the misunderstanding – every book has its time. That’s right. The necessary consequence of this is that the book must be there when its time has come.

There’s this wonderful phrase: “It’s not hoarding when it’s books.” It is pure logic, pure necessity. Which is why you can hardly have too many books.

From Snippets to Shelter: The Emotional Architecture of a Personal Library

A serious and touching counterpoint: Lizzie Doron, an Israeli author, has set up her library in the house’s shelter. There, it – the library – is safe in the event of an attack. And in the event of an air raid, Doron flees there with body, soul, and spirit.

Which ones do you keep from the unread books to the read ones, and why? I try to only keep books that mean something to me (apart from those that are still waiting for their time). Those whose story has touched me, which tell of a special character, or which – and this is the most common case – contain quotes that I don’t want to lose.

Such a quote is marked in pencil, and the page is retrievable with a scrap of paper. I love it when my eyes wander over the spines of books (probably looking for the book whose time has come) and get stuck on one of these visible snippets: “Oh, which book is that? And what thought was in it?” Sometimes it comes to me immediately, sometimes I pull the book out from between its neighbors, open it to the clipped page, look for the marked passage – and am delighted, as if I were discovering a familiar person in a crowd.

My favorite one is Friedrich Ani, which always catches my eye. It’s one of the few books that only has one snippet in it, but for this one, it’s all the more important to me. I don’t even have to open the book; the sentence is there immediately. And I know I could have concluded this text in a more rounded way; I know the sentence has nothing to do with books, but it comes from a book that had its day many years ago. And it will always have a place on my shelf because it holds this sentence, this treasure: “Don’t take your life too personally.”

article in German

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