What Our Shelves of Unread Books Teach Us About Ourselves

The author correctly rejects the term “antilibrary” but then goes off in the weeds trying to find a new term to replace it.

It is claimed that the typical university library has at least 2 orders of magnitude more books than a person could ever hope to actually read in their lifetime. I accept that, but take it further. This library contains at least 3 orders of magnitude more books than an extraordinarily literary person will realistically read in their lifetime, and 4-5 orders of magnitude more books than the average person will read in their lifetime.

Therefore, a “personal collection” of books isn’t a “personal library” until it has grown far beyond what the owner has or possibly even will read.