Antilibrary Liberation

A couple of weeks ago, Naomi @ Consumed by Ink posted this article on her facebook.

I can never resist bookish content so I immediately clicked on it and read it.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

The article basically gives permission to have stacks and stacks of unread books in your house. The idea of an “antilibrary” is basically to show you all the things that you have yet to learn, to reinforce the idea that you don’t know everything, which makes you a smarter person in the long run.

I had been feeling BAD about all the books that had been piling up around my house. Since we’ve moved, I’ve been driving to work instead of taking transit and I’ve lost about 2 hours of reading time every day! So the unread books have been accumulating much more quickly. I’ve been mostly avoiding the library and trips to the bookstore didn’t hold the same joy because they just made me think about all the books I already had that needed reading.

Since I’ve read this article I’ve been released from that guilt. I’ve been adding books to my stacks at an alarming pace. Don’t believe me?

These are the books I’ve brought home since reading the article just over a week ago:

• I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara
• The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson
• Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure by Amy Kaufman (yeah, I did)
• Surprise Me by Sophie Kinsella
• An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
• The Girl in the Woods by Camilla Lackberg

If you’re wondering how I died, just know that being crushed by all the things I didn’t know was the way I’d always hoped to go.