Tsundoku

Short description: Term for buying books but not reading them

A stack of books found after cleaning a room

Tsundoku (積ん読) is the phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them.[1][2][3][4] 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.[4] 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"). There are suggestions to use the word in the English language and include it in dictionaries like the Collins Dictionary.[4]

The American author and bibliophile A. Edward Newton commented on a similar state in 1921.[5]

In his 2007 book, The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the term "antilibrary", which has been compared with tsundoku.[6]

## See also

* Bibliophilia
* Bibliomania

## References

1. ↑ Brooks, Katherine (19 March 2017). "There's A Japanese Word For People Who Buy More Books Than They Can Actually Read". The Huffington Post. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/theres-a-japanese-word-for-people-who-buy-more-books-than-they-can-actually-read_us_58f79b7ae4b029063d364226.
2. ↑ Tobar, Hector (24 July 2014). "Are you a book hoarder? There's a word for that.". Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-book-hoarding-tsundoku-20140724-story.html.
3. ↑ Gerken, Tom (29 July 2018). "Tsundoku: The art of buying books and never reading them". BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44981013.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Crow, Jonathan (24 July 2014). "'Tsundoku', the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the English Language". Open Culture. https://www.openculture.com/2014/07/tsundoku-should-enter-the-english-language.html.
5. ↑ Dodson, Steve (February 7, 2008). "A Quote on Bibliomania". http://languagehat.com/a-quote-on-bibliomania/. Retrieved July 24, 2016.
6. ↑ Popova, Maria (2015-03-24). "Umberto Eco's Antilibrary: Why Unread Books Are More Valuable to Our Lives than Read Ones" (in en-US). https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antilibrary/.

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