My friend, the author Scott Archer Jones, posted on Facebook today a word of the day type deal that was rather coincidental, because the post I started yesterday (this one) dealt with the exact same thing—letting books pile up in one’s home the way many authors do. The Japanese word for this? Tsundoku.
Wikipedia: Tsundoku (積ん読) is the phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them. The term is also used to refer to books ready for reading later when they are on a bookshelf. The term originated in the Meiji era (1868–1912) as Japanese slang. It combines elements of the terms tsunde-oku (積んでおく, "to pile things up ready for later and leave"), and dokusho (読書, "reading books"). That you?
Personally, I have a lot of books. A lot of books. And I've always wondered that about other writers and readers: Is your home library where books go to die? Myself, I have hundreds sitting on level after level of a custom bookshelf I built myself that covers an entire wall, which I did with black industrial iron pipes and a few 2x12s (which I think look great and only took a couple hours to complete). I have books in boxes. Large boxes, small boxes (hint: small boxes are better unless you’re looking to pull a back muscle). Those boxes are in the same efficiency as the bookshelves. I have more in my house, the second floor of a pole barn (if you’re not a Midwesterner, that’s just a large metal building type structure), and a two-car garage behind my house. I have books stacked on my nightstand and atop my dresser. In my kids’ rooms. On the kitchen table and on the kitchen bar/stool area. I am NOT a hoarder, but you wouldn’t know it by the amount of books I have. They’re all I collect—I’ve never collected figurines, stamps, comic books, Coca Cola swag, or anything else people collect. Unfortunately, my book collection is getting a little out of hand.
My house and the houses my parents own, are where my books go to die. Or where they’re on life support, anyway. As I’m sure most of you reading this know, because you’re writers, exactly which books are where. For example, I know where my copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses sits all pretty and unread. Or partially read about twenty-five times and then returned to its well-positioned location on my pipe bookshelf. I know Anna Karenina, that wonderful tome from Leo Tolstoy whose front cover fell off on my paperback copy, sits carefully pressed between Lolita, which I’ve also never read (don’t shake your head at me), and Moby Dick, which I’ve read about a third of at bedtime with my youngest daughter who, one day, said, Dad, read Moby Dick to me (she’d had enough after a third in). Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, one of my favorite books (see, I’ve read one!) sits on my bedside table, because it’s one of those magical works that I’ve read more than once and will read again whenever I’ve given a couple books I can’t get into. Dostoevsky is a safe go-to for me. I also have four novels in one written by Charles Dickens (I think it’s the B&N edition). Midnight’s Children, also one of my favorites, is wedged between The Sun Also Rises and Beloved by Toni Morrison (also a favorite and such an incredible novel).
But if you’re a writer and collector of books, you know our addiction. You know that every time some books comes out that gets all the raves and falls into your wheelhouse of “I must have that! It’s in the genre I love!” books, you know how easy it is to jump on Amazon (or wherever you get your books), so you can have it shipped to you where you purchase and then track that sucker as it makes its way from Oregon or Pennsylvania or some public library making way for the new Colleen Hoover or James Patterson or Daniel Silva book (no offense to any of those writers—I’m just being cheeky). Books are a passion for many (if not all) of us. You’re a reader of this blog or at least this post, so I’m assuming you’re a writer or bibliophile (another word for a book collector or a person who loves great books). I don’t drink alcohol (at least anymore, although I do drink nonalcoholic wine and beer), and I don’t have other vices other than working out, so books it is! I can’t think of another mentally-healthy thing to do, other than, perhaps, playing Sudoku and participating in actual brain function enhancing games and activities. That’s my excuse for having dozens of trees cut down every year for my own personal benefit, anyway. Think of me what you will.
This all to say one thing: why do I and so many writers and readers hoard books like they’re on their way to being banned like Alice Sebold’s Lucky, Sapphire’s Push, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, and seven hundred other books (if not more) in Ron DeSantis’s Florida alone? Because we can. That’s why. Because our love of books and literature and reading exceeds the storage space we possess. Because we know where these books take us to in our minds, in our learnings, in our being. Because there’s that little craziness within us that soothes the entertainment, the intrigue, the need-to-know thing within our brains that holds this magical power over us that we can’t control. I don’t know about you, but I can’t not write, even when I’m not writing. This blog? It keeps me in tune with the writing world. It makes me research things I may have forgotten or maybe even never known about. But when I’m not writing a blog post, I’m writing fiction or, in some cases, nonfiction. When I’m not writing this blog, I’m pacing those boxes in my efficiency (I built it and basically only use it for storing my books, even though there’s a full kitchen, half bath, etc. in there). I’m letting my eyes wander over these marvelous works written by marvelous writers who I just can’t stay away from, even if I never read their work or try and fail to read their works ten, twenty, a hundred times. Books are timeless (most of them, I hope), and they provide something other works do not. They are a special sort of thing, and I make no apologies for my need to collect them.
I am a proponent of Tsundoku (積ん読). It pains me to see people reading on Kindles or tablets, though I understand why someone would want (or need) to do so, as the older we get the more we may need to do a little zooming in (I can’t read plenty unless I have my readers on, or at least a high-powered microscope if I’m trying to read the back of a bottle of children’s Tylenol). But I fear we’re a dying breed—the beasts who must have works of literature whose spines we tape up, whose smells we must smell, whose heft we must carry. As the kids say, YOLO! You only live once, and I plan to live that life surrounded by books. They are the only thing I love more than my kids, and they’ll be with me until the day I die.
Cully Perlman is an author, blogger, and Substantive Editor. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com or Cullyperlman@gmail.com
Instead of confronting my problem, I've found an ethical avenue to enable it. I use bookshop.org rather than Amazon, because their business model is more ethical.