Tsundoku
Tsundoku (積ん読) is the phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in a home without reading them.[1][2][3][4] The term is also used to refer to unread books on a bookshelf meant for reading later.
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").[citation needed]
The American author and bibliophile A. Edward Newton commented on a similar state in 1921.[5] The Canadian poet Robert W. Service remarked on the phenomenon in his poem, "Book Lover".[6]
In his 2007 book The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized the term "antilibrary", which was coined by Umberto Eco to characterize Jonathan Swift's description of a library in Gulliver's Travels and has been compared with tsundoku.[7][8]
See also
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References
[edit]- ^ Brooks, Katherine (19 March 2017). "There's A Japanese Word For People Who Buy More Books Than They Can Actually Read". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on 15 October 2017. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
- ^ Tobar, Hector (24 July 2014). "Are you a book hoarder? There's a word for that". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 16 October 2017. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
- ^ Gerken, Tom (29 July 2018). "Tsundoku: The art of buying books and never reading them". BBC News. Archived from the original on 2 November 2019. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
- ^ a b 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. Archived from the original on 22 March 2021. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
- ^ Dodson, Steve (7 February 2008). "A Quote on Bibliomania". Language Hat. Archived from the original on 27 February 2021. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
- ^ https://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=1440
- ^ Eco, Umberto; McLaughlin, M. L. (2005). On literature. Orlando: Harvest Book. p. 107. ISBN 978-0-15-100812-4.
- ^ Popova, Maria (24 March 2015). "Umberto Eco's Antilibrary: Why Unread Books Are More Valuable to Our Lives than Read Ones". The Marginalian. Archived from the original on 12 October 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
External links
[edit]
The dictionary definition of 積ん読 at Wiktionary
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