When the famous author Nassim Taleb coined the phrase ‘antilibrary,’ so many of us, across the world, felt a sigh of relief. Felt validated. Legitimised. Liberated from the guilt of buying more books than one could read. Antilibrary refers to the number of books in your personal collection that you have not read.

“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.”

Whether one reads it or not, the discovery of books is often serendipitous to most of us, or at least some of us. Picking them from the long shelfs in bookshops, admiring the cover, reading the blurb, and smelling the pages have now probably given away to a few clicks on Amazon and delivered on your Kindle.

My sources of discovery of new books have changed over the years. Book reviews in weekend newspapers and magazines and browsing in book stores were the primary sources earlier. Social media feeds, podcasts, and some of the newsletters I subscribe have now become the major sources. These feeds often contain innumerable links of articles on various topics that refer to interesting books while some other are articles on books itself. Then, there are references to books on tweets and podcasts. And finally there are books referred in books itself! I save the links to these articles on Evernote in my phone. And now, an easier and better way I have found is to add those books that I am considering to the Amazon Wish List.

Journalist NS Ramnath recently wrote about finding good books through websites like ‘Five Books’, ‘What Should I Read Next,’ and 'Goodbooks'. While it’s fun to find books through these sites, the serendipity is lost somewhere.

All these adds up to a problem of plenty and choice. But, then one has to make choices. Life, in general, is about choices we make, and not so much about right or wrong. I read more of non-fiction, and is mostly driven by my need to make a sense of this world. And that lends itself to topics as wide as economics, various branches of science, philosophy, psychology/human behaviour, and so on. Many a time, I start a book, don’t understand it, feel completely inadequate, and then drop it. There are also instances when I have dropped a book, picked it up 3 or 4 years later, and then suddenly it seems to make sense.

Yuval Harari, the most celebrated historian and author, mentioned in one of his interviews that he sometimes starts reading 10 books at a time and drops nine of them, because he doesn’t find them interesting.

Discovering books is a joy. Whether I understand or not, I read. Whether I read or not, I buy. And I am happy to have an antilibrary.