The anti-library

From Why You Should Surround Yourself With More Books Than You'll Ever Have Time to Read :

Taleb kicks off his musings with an anecdote about the legendary library of Italian writer Umberto Eco, which contained a jaw-dropping 30,000 volumes.

Did Eco actually read all those books? Of course not, but that wasn't the point of surrounding himself with so much potential but as-yet-unrealized knowledge. By providing a constant reminder of all the things he didn't know, Eco's library kept him intellectually hungry and perpetually curious.

... An antilibrary is a powerful reminder of your limitations - the vast quantity of things you don't know, half know, or will one day realize you're wrong about.

A few of the books I've currently got on order: Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, A Culinary Journey of South African Indigenous Foods (inspired by reading this history of African cuisine), Lysenko's Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, and Finite and Infinite Games. That said I do intend to read these ... something of course said of any book I acquire but which unfortunately the scarcity of time sometimes forbids.