The Nowbrary

On walks in my neighbourhood, with the luxurious real estate a baby stroller provides, I would actively curate my collection. Books that had remained in my home for too long, unread and collecting dust, or that I had simply outgrown, came along in the stroller and went into the little free libraries, which freed up space on my Ikea Kallax. While I was there, I would browse what other people had left.

The nowbrary initially started as a way for me to stop feeling guilty about collecting books. At some point I shifted from collecting physical books to a ballooning 2500+ digital library. Whenever I have a flight or train bound travel, I end up staring at a wall of my books agonizing about what to take before my eyes gravitate towards the ones I’ve already read. Or specifically, the ones that hold the most promise of teaching me something new. 9 out of ten, those books will probably be the ones that find themselves in my bag.

I don’t like what Goodreads has become. In 2013 it described its Reading Challenge like this: “We’ll let you know when you’re falling behind and when you’re out ahead!”

Mine isn’t a list of my best books, or of books I plan to read. It’s about a longitudinal relationship with a select number of books.

Books move in and out of the shelf like seasons. I like the idea that the shelf in any one season works as a life bookmark. Looking back at it would show me where I was at the time.

The “now” in the name comes from Derek Sivers’ /now page, which he added to his website in 2015 to say what he was focused on. The shelf can go online too. The nowbrary is not the /now or the /about page, but a page that hosts the books you’ll always have within reach.