TSUNDOKU

Piles of Unread Books

Although lately I have gotten rid of hundreds of books, I still have hundreds left. I noticed that recently when I had to move a lot of them to paint a room. I also noticed that most were dusty, many unread and a sizeable number contained content I could no longer remember. There is no good reason for me to ever buy another book. Given that I am likely to do so, however, I need to come up with one.

Luckily, I found some information that will be useful to those of us who bought another book we did not need while out supposedly shopping for Christmas gifts for others. I assume there are lots of us since the word that describes our situation is Japanese and comes from the other side of the globe. It is tsundoku and basically it refers to piles of unread books. The word is the subject of a few recent articles from which I will supply snippets. Trust me, memorizing them and learning about tsundoku will be more beneficial to your well-being than playing sudoku is for your brain.

"A man who has quit expanding his personal library may have reached the point where he thinks he knows all he needs to and that what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. He has no desire to keep growing intellectually. The man with an ever-expanding library understands the importance of remaining curious, open to new ideas and voices."

"A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books."

"So stop beating yourself up for buying too many books or for having a to-read list that you could never get through in three lifetimes. All those books you haven't read are indeed a sign of your ignorance. But if you know how ignorant you are, you're way ahead of the vast majority of other people."

Sources:

The last quotation is from an article by Jessica Stillman found on the website of Inc. "Why You Should Surround Yourself With More Books Than You'll Ever Have Time to Read: An Overstuffed Bookcase (or e-reader) Says Good Things About Your Mind." The quotation about the private library is from Taleb's book, Black Swan, and is taken from the Stillman article.

See also: "All Those Books You've Bought But Haven't Time to Read? There's a Word for That," by Kevin Mims, New York Times, Oct. 8, 2018.
"Tsundoku: The Art of Buying Books and Never Reading Them," BBC News, July 29, 2018

In response to such articles, some readers were asked about their tsundoku and from them you will learn we are not alone. See Atlas Obscura, a source that is well-worth looking at for other reasons:

"How Does Your Tsundoku Stack Up?", Eric Grundhauser, Atlas Obscura, Oct. 24, 2018.

Post Script:
 I will try to continue to offer bonus information for premium subscribers and try to make them as interesting and useful as the footnotes provided by A.J.P. Taylor.
   For those of you who don't think tsundoku will suffice, I will provide a new Dutch word: DWARSLIGGERS. Consider it to mean 'tiny books'. They are very small and are now being offered by Dutton. Your piles of unread books will then be a bit smaller. See: "Tiny Books Fit in One Hand. Will They Change the Way We Read," Alexandra Alter, New York Times, Oct. 29, 2018.


 As a last resort, sacrifice all your books for this one by Pierre Bayard: How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read and add this one if withdrawal sets in and you need a book fix: How To Really Talk About Books You Haven't Read, by Henry Hitchings. If you can't break the habit and are going to sit around all winter surrounded by books, you might consider this purchase.