The Virtue of Owning Books You Haven’t Read: Why Umberto Eco Kept an “Antilibrary”
[...] Eco separated his 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 is that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendages but a research tool.”
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For me, the main purpose of having books I haven’t read is that I (almost) always have something available when I want to read a new book, no matter what kind of book I’m in the mood for!
And also book shopping and collecting is fun and is a totally separate hobby than reading, ha ha!
I do something similar, but with ebooks via libby, since I try to keep my home bookshelves to a manageable level lol. I'll request a hold on about 10 books at a time, and then suspend the hold for 180 days (and I can re-suspend if that runs out). That way I move to the front of the line, but when it gets to me it skips me and gives the book to the next person. So as soon as I finish a different book, I can reactivate the hold and will get the book in the next day or two usually.