There’s a word for it! Tsundoku is the Japanese word for buying books you don’t read.
Now… I read a lot. But it’s unquestionable that buying books is a pleasurable experience that is sometimes divorced from actual reading. Of course I always mean to read them when I buy them. But I definitely buy more than I can read.
My to-read pile
Yes, I know about libraries. You’ll laugh, but libraries make me nervous, and it probably has to do with my backlog of to-read books. I can never get to the books I take out of the library within the allotted couple of weeks, because I’ve got all these others ahead of them. And although my library is oh-so-nice about it, I still get flashbacks to my worse Blockbuster fines.
Plus, let me be honest: there’s just something delicious about owning books.
So apparently there’s even a Goodreads support group for those of us suffering from tsundoku. But I’m not sure I will join it. Because I don’t want to be cured.
And my book consumption is good for the world. I
