The affliction of "tsundoku"

The English language has borrowed staggering numbers of terms from other languages and incorporated them into everyday usage. Modern English is heavily derived from both Germanic and Latin roots, but we’ve borrowed words from such far-flung places as Icelandic (“saga”), Indonesian (“guru”), and Polynesian (“taboo”), among much else.

Despite this linguistic flexibility, there are endless extraordinarily specific terms used in other languages that have no English equivalent. According to this article, “Have you ever felt a little mbuki-mvuki – the irresistible urge to ‘shuck off your clothes as you dance’? Perhaps a little kilig – the jittery fluttering feeling as you talk to someone you fancy? How about uitwaaien – which encapsulates the revitalizing effects of taking a walk in the wind? These words – taken from Bantu, Tagalog, and Dutch – have no direct English equivalent, but they represent very precise emotional experiences that are neglected in our language.”

This is what came to mind when I read about the Japanese term tsundoku, and you’re gonna love it. Yes, the Japanese have coined a term to identify “the art of buying books and never reading them.”

I’m sure every bibliophile suffers from this to some degree. Specifically the term “describes the intention to read books and their eventual, accidental collection.”

My standard requested Christmas gift each year is a gift card to an online used-book seller, so whenever I see a book I’m interested in reading, I can order it without angsting over the price. (The penalty for living extremely rural is a library system that is almost guaranteed (a) to not have the book you want in the system, and (b) be unable to find it in inter-library loan.) However this usually means if I’m interested enough in a book to order it online, I’ll follow through and read it.

The same can’t be said (ahem) when it comes to things like library sales or other in-person second-hand resources. I mean, c’mon … who’s going to deny themselves the pleasure of purchasing an armful of books for pennies on the dollar? Under such conditions, I’ll admit that sometimes we get carried away and purchase books with the good intention of reading them, and which then pile up. So yeah, tsundoku.

Fortunately, apparently the term does not have any connotations of criticism in Japan, nor does it carry any overtones of stigma. (Yet another example of something the Japanese do right.)

In my current situation, visiting my parents in Southern California, I am so tempted to visit an excellent used bookstore Older Daughter and I discovered a couple years ago. But I’ve resisted. Not only would it be impossible to schlep twenty extra pounds of books with me on an airplane, but our new dedication to extra super-dooper frugal living hasn’t waned just because I’m traveling. (Knowing I would be visiting my parents, we put aside a travel budget before I got laid off.)

In fact, frugal living simply gives me an opportunity to start going through our selection of unread books and dip into them. Maybe I can reverse our tsundoku.

So is it just me, or do others suffer from this affliction?