Building a Library for the Work Still Ahead

Erin Doom

Oct 1

6 min read

Updated: Oct 2

On Unread Books, Chosen Shelves, and the Work of a Lifetime

Protection of our Most Holy Lady the Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary

Commemoration of the Holy Apostle Ananias of the Seventy

Commemoration of St. Romanos the Melodist

Anno Domini 2026, October 1

The developing Podvig Study, home to Dr. Doom’s working library—books read, marked, returned to, and kept near for the work still ahead.

THERE WAS a time when every unread book on my shelves felt like an accusation. I had bought it, begun it, or intended to begin it, and therefore I believed I had to finish it. A bookmark left somewhere in the middle seemed to mark a failure of discipline. A book abandoned after thirty pages remained unfinished business.

This way of thinking can turn a personal library into a record of guilt. The shelves reveal not only what we’ve read, but everything we’ve failed to read. New books arrive faster than we can finish old ones. Interests shift. Responsibilities intervene. Some books prove less useful than we expected, while others wait patiently for a season that has not yet come.

But a personal library is not a collection of books one has finished. It’s a place of return: books read, marked, remembered, abandoned, rediscovered, and kept nearby because we may someday need what they contain.

The Books We Haven’t Read

Nassim Nicholas Taleb gave the name antilibrary to the unread portion of Umberto Eco’s enormous personal library. Taleb coined the term, but Eco’s shelves supplied the image. The unread books were not evidence of negligence. They represented everything their owner did not yet know.

That changes the meaning of an unread book. It is no longer merely an unfinished task. It becomes a visible reminder of the limits of one’s knowledge and of the questions that remain unanswered.

The unread books on our shelves do not display what we have mastered. They keep us in the presence of what we have yet to receive.

A library made entirely of books already read would contain only the known past. An antilibrary leaves room for the future. It holds the subjects we hope to study, the writers we suspect may become important to us, and the books we bought because something told us that one day we would need them.

Sometimes that day comes years later. A question arises in the course of writing, teaching, parenting, praying, or simply living, and suddenly a long-neglected volume is no longer an ornament. We remember that it’s there. We pull it from the shelf and discover that the book has been waiting for the reader we’ve finally become.

This doesn’t mean that every book deserves space indefinitely. A library must be chosen. Some books can be passed along because they’ve given what they had to give. Others can be released because they never belonged there in the first place. The point is not to accumulate indiscriminately, but to recognize that possession and completion are not the same thing. A worthy unread book may be doing useful work simply by remaining available.

Freed from Finishing

I once felt compelled to read every book from cover to cover. If I began a book, I believed I was obligated to finish it, even when I had already received what I needed from it or knew that it was not useful to me. Reading became a kind of contract: opening the book created a debt, and only the final page could discharge it.

Then I encountered a passage by C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. In the chapter “Time and Beyond Time,” Lewis writes:

“It is a very silly idea that in reading a book you must never ‘skip.’”

He continues by observing that sensible readers freely pass over a chapter when they recognize that it will be of no use to them. Lewis was making a relatively practical point, but it changed the way I understood reading.

I no longer had to treat every book as an endurance test. The purpose of reading was not to prove that I had looked at every word. It was to receive what the book had to give. Sometimes that requires slow attention to the whole work. Sometimes it requires returning to the same pages repeatedly. Sometimes a single chapter, paragraph, or sentence does its work by opening the door we needed opened.

Lewis didn’t say all of that in precisely those words. That is what I received from him. His permission to skip became permission to read with freedom rather than compulsion. It changed my reading journey and, with it, much of my life.

This isn’t an excuse for intellectual laziness. Difficult books often demand perseverance, and the most important passages may not yield their meaning immediately. There is a difference between setting aside a book because it asks too much of us and recognizing honestly that it isn’t the book we need at this moment. Wisdom lies partly in learning that difference.

Some books should be finished despite the struggle. Some should be read slowly over the course of years. Some should be consulted rather than consumed. Some should be left unfinished without guilt. And some should remain on the shelf until life supplies the question to which they may contain an answer.

A Place of Return

A working library does not divide neatly into books read and books unread. There are books I’ve finished but barely remember, books I’ve never finished but that permanently changed me, and books I’ve read more than once because they continue to disclose something new.

There are marked books filled with conversations between my former self and my present one. An old underline reveals what arrested my attention years ago. A note in the margin preserves a question I don’t remember asking. Occasionally I return to a familiar page and find that the passage I once overlooked has become the most important one there.

That’s one reason a personal library cannot be measured simply by the number of completed books. It’s also an external form of memory. The shelves retain traces of old questions, earlier convictions, abandoned projects, and moments of discovery. They remind us not only of what we know, but of how we came to know it.

The Christian tradition understands this kind of reading. Scripture is not read once and placed on a completed shelf. The Church returns to the same words again and again—across days, seasons, and lifetimes. Familiar passages meet us differently because we have changed. The text has remained, but the reader arrives carrying new griefs, responsibilities, failures, and hopes.

Other books can work this way too. They remain near because their work in us may not be finished. We keep them not as trophies of accomplishment, but as companions in an ongoing formation.

A personal library is not a monument to the reader we have already been. It is a workshop for the reader, and the person, we are still becoming.

Books for the Work Still Ahead

The shelves in the Podvig Study hold my working library. Many of these books helped shape my years at Eighth Day Institute: its events, publications, website, and the larger vision that developed through that work. They also helped form me. Some now shape the vision behind Podvig and support the writing and publishing work before me. Some have helped me understand the Church, the human person, language, work, place, and the good life. Others wait for purposes I cannot yet name.

Calling it a working library helps distinguish it from a museum. These books are meant to be handled. They are marked, stacked, consulted, carried from room to room, and sometimes lost temporarily beneath whatever project is underway. They are returned to the shelf and pulled down again. Some are lent. Some are given away because another reader needs them more urgently.

A personal library can therefore become a form of hospitality. Its books are available not only to the person who collected them, but to children, friends, students, visitors, and future readers. A book purchased for one reason may eventually serve an entirely different person. A volume that has rested unread for years may leave the house in someone else’s hands and begin its real work there.

That possibility matters. The value of a library does not lie in keeping every book forever. It lies in placing worthy books where they can remain available until they are needed, and then being willing to let them travel.

Building such a library is the work of a lifetime. It happens gradually, one question and one worthy book at a time. Its shelves should contain books that have formed us, books that continue to challenge us, books we expect to need, and a few whose importance we sense without yet understanding.

The unread books should keep us humble. The marked books should preserve our memory. The unfinished books should teach us discernment. The books we return to should show us how we’ve changed. And the books we hand to someone else should remind us that knowledge, like every good gift, was never meant to stop with us.

A personal library is not a record of everything we’ve completed. It’s a place prepared for the work still ahead.