tsundoku: the art of buying books and not reading them as they pile up.
As one commenter on reddit said upon learning of this word, ‘Why are you in my house?’
Tsundoku is my family in a nutshell, at least my mother and I. We attend many a library book sale like it’s a birthday party–ready to have fun and with gift in hand (money for the library). We also hold on to library books way too long (hiya, overdue fines, so again a gift for the library). When I have a doctor appointment, I stop at Barnes and Noble on the way home to ‘treat myself’.
The chances of me reading and finishing books I have borrowed or bought are very small. Some books have a strong pull on me and I do finish them, but for the most part I am most enamored of a book at the point of purchase.
On the other hand, goodreads recently pinged me to commit to a reading challenge for the year 2019 and I went to my goodreads profile and discovered that I have surpassed my reading goals every year for the last three years.
2016 | 12 books (met goal at 150%) |
2017 | 12 books (met goal at 125%) |
2018 | 15 books (met goal at 100%) |
This year I committed to 24 books, so 2 books a month (I’m behind already!). It’s pretty ambitious, considering the goals I made and met in past years, but I certainly have plenty of material to work with.
People have done tsundoku challenges to try to get through these books they had to have but haven’t read. One I found is a tsundoku bingo challenge. Gamified reading. Pretty cool.