My library

We did major house renovation and were forced to go through all the stuff we had in all the dark corners. We threw away quite a few things and hid some back into the dark corners (but better organized now). The house is now much less cluttered. Feels good!

Among those tossed away were many books – up to 25-30% of our library probably. I was surprised by how easy it was, to through them away. Some books we even never read. They just became irrelevant. Others I have read but did not find anything worth re-reading or retaining for other reasons. Oh, yes, and there were several big-format books with photographs: Best of the Year, Best of National Geographic, and similar. The Internet made them obsolete.

What is left? Hardcore classics and personal favorites. Some have sentimental values. I remember how I was impressed by reading some of them. The Devil and the Good Lord is one such book. Gödel, Escher, Bach is another one. I probably will read these again. Many volumes of Hemingway I doubt I will read, but I keep opening them arbitrarily ones in a while reading a few passages. The images he creates are so vivid and sad. It was written not by a happy man. (If a happy man ever writes anything.) But he sparked my interest in writing, so I will always keep his books (I have read them the first time as a teenager).

All eleven volumes of Durant’s The Story of Civilization we have read together with my wife Luda several times already and will probably read again. There are so many facts – material for thoughts and understanding how the world got in the current state. We are amazed by how much Will Durant learned and processed. He wanted to be a philosopher but decided to study world history first. The project absorbed him for life. And I suspect he got the same feeling I got from reading his books: human life is so volatile and unpredictable that any statement about it requires a lot of assumptions of type “if this and that does not change then.” It makes the idea of becoming a philosopher who is expected to pronounce generalities about human condition daunting.

There are other books left on the shelves I definitely will read. The multi-volume sets The Mediterranean and Civilization and Capitalism by Fernand Braudel I tried to read already many years ago, loved them but did not have time to finish. Several books by Simon Schama. We enjoyed his documentaries and now hope to enjoy reading more of his works. 

While reviewing my attitude towards books, I discovered that I loved and still love paradoxes, thus Hofstadter on my shelves, many editions of Lewis Carroll‘s books with great illustrations, albums of Hieronymus Bosch‘s paintings, books of Ecclesiastes, Chesterton, Oscar Wilde, Aldous Huxley, and many others, even after John Gall explained the basics of many paradoxes.

Having observed so many unexpected turns during my lifetime made me probably better aligned with paradoxes than with deterministic predictions.

It was very insightful to see own reflection in the library.