Anti-Climacus

MAKING FUN OF THE ASPIRATIONAL BOOKSHELF: A worthy aim, accomplished to good effect here.

Now, I should note that for many years, I possessed an aspirational bookshelf. In high school, I had a relatively high disposable income and absolutely nothing to spend it on except books, music and coffee. Combine this with a decent local used bookstore option, and I'd frequently stock up on things I thought I might one day like to read. In the time between then and now, most of those books have been read. The ones that remain I will get to soon enough. I feel like this constitutes an exception to the 'aspirational bookshelf' rule, though others may disagree.

Grad school also alters the dynamics of book-ownership: I won't get rid of anything on the 'political science/political theory' shelves because, however vanishingly small the chances are that I will have to teach American Political Parties in my life, they all function as reference works. Then again, the idea of getting rid of books for any reason is difficult for me to conceptualize. I try to be careful about what I buy; anything that I've actually read has become tied up with my life in some way, and getting rid of a book seems like a small act of violence (I assume that feeling will go away once I top 1000 books or so, but I'm not there yet).

All that said--owning a book because you want to look like the sort of person who would read that kind of book?--seems like a mockery of the point of reading.