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Is this article actually just complete nonsense? I can just look at my wishlist to see how many books I want to buy that I haven't bought yet.

Then when I want to read one, I buy it. Then I read it.

I admit sometimes I hate a book so much I don't finish it and buy another, but I don't think that's the kind of unread book being talked about.

Maybe it's not nonsense, actually, is this article just some kind of post hoc justification for impulse buying tons of books?



Without entirely defending the article, its claim seems to be “people tend to read more when they own more”:

> [...] studies have shown that book ownership and reading typically go hand in hand to great effect.

So, you are unaffected by this claimed phenomenon, good for you; but you haven't really debunked the claim either.


Another claim seems to be that a collection of unread books serves as a personal reminder of ignorance, that the un-known always exceeds the known, a kind of "memento ignorantiae" that gives us the humility and motivation to always seek to learn more rather than remain complacently content with the knowledge we have already acquired.

And possibly the physicality of a dead-tree library carries this effect more forcibly than an online shopping list.

Pardon my latin.


> Then when I want to read one, I buy it.

In the past I collected half-read books.

Now I collect little cards, each with a book title and author written on it.

Ordering online is only a search and click away.




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