Craft By Zen

Curation  /  Anti-Library


What is an Anti-library?

An anti-library is a collection of unread books. The Marginalian wrote an excellent piece about it called Umberto Eco's Antilibrary: Why Unread Books Are More Valuable to Our Lives than Read Ones. While it sounds wasteful to have unread books, think of it like a pike of books you would gladly pick up when you find time to read. The Japanese call this Tsudonku.

Tsudonku: Japanese for leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with other unread books.

Back to the article about Umberto Eco, one thing that resonated with me is resumes are a collection of knowledge of things you know. What if you have a list of things you don't yet know?

People don't walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it's the job of their competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did.