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I recently wrote about why I got rid of my wishlist. But there is a certain quality to books beyond the mere information they contain. The book as a physical object represents something.

In the worst case it's just showing off, posing as erudite, without putting in intellectual effort, or, somewhat less offensive to my taste, but still something I would not want to be found guilty of, to use books not as a medium but as mere decorative objects.

On a less materialistic level a book also represents a longing: to immerse into a different world, to laugh, to learn, to remember, to explore. The physical copy a the book insofar acts as a proxy for qualities that make us human. Would you want your home to be a space that is so devoid of such objects that you could theoretically move into a different place without noticing much of a difference? I would something like that not even call a home in the first place. These proxy objects give a soul to a place (so do for that matter childrens drawings, family photos, souvenirs etc.). There is a balance to be kept. The proxy object should not become a burden or an obligation that weights you down.

There is a quote attributed to Jorge Luis Borges, I don't know how good the translation actually is, that I find quite a relatable and romantic notion: I've always imagined paradise as a kind of library. I don't want to bother too much with theology, but a physical library can also turn into a kind of purgatory. Nassim Taleb calls the collection of unread books an antilibrary, and writes (in the Black Swan): 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.. What a choice of word: feeling a menace when you look at your shelves. And while I agree that the unread books are the most important one's, I consider it unhealthy to make a kind of Memento mori out of one's personal library. Well, maybe the reason Borges thought of paradise as a library could be that he might have foremost considered it a place beyond time.

But finiteness (of life, time, space, money, bookshelves) is what it is. One still can, even if only for a countable number of days on this pale blue dot, try to create and live in a small personal nerdvana.