Tsundoku problem
It’s a word for book hoarder. “In Japanese, there’s a word for it: tsundoku. It’s a noun that describes a person who buys books and doesn’t read them, and then lets them pile up on the floor, on shelves, and assorted pieces of furniture” - Los Angeles Times
I spent a quiet night over weekend going through stacks after stacks of books in my study. I have close to 30 books that I bought and was gifted to me in 2023, and I haven’t even read them yet! And I have few more in the shipment that’ll arrive this month. Also there’s an old stack of unread books that was carted to our house from my father in laws’ before he moved out of the country many years ago too! It’s probably, a total of 60 unread books pile up somewhere on my bookshelves tonight. This is the most unread books I have on the shelf, I never had more than 3 unread books before!
There’s no such thing as too many books, it’s not a problem. The problem to me is when I don’t read them, if it’s on the shelf I’ve got to read them ~ just my own policy. Same goes for everything else in the house, if it’s sitting rent free in my house, I’ve got to have a purpose of keeping them, at least use them for a good reason. It has to spark joy and have practical uses of why we are keeping it lying around the house, otherwise I am giving it away. Let it spark joy for someone else. It’s something I learned to adopt from KonMari method by Marie Kondo ~~ If you don’t know Marie Kondo, my friend Andreea described her as the lady who throws everything out of the door! Haha.
I’ve got to be honest, not all books spark joy to me. But those stacks on my shelf are currently sparking all the joy out of me, screaming my name and I want to start reading them. Before the unread stacks start growing, things get out of hand and I’d ended up being a tsundoku, having more books than I could read. Really, this is my personal preference for how I manage my book possessions.
This probably a good start to a low buying challenge in 2024, so that I’ll finish reading what I already own before hauling on new stacks. Little confident if I can hold myself accountable for this, but let’s see how it goes!
How many unread books you’ve got on your bookshelves today?
