Tsundoku: When your unread books read you back

Every reader and collector of books will probably testify to the paradox that the more you read, the bigger your heap of unread books grows.

A relative who had a fairly large collection of books once told me that he read all his books simultaneously and hence could not spare a particular book that I wanted to borrow. This was many years ago, and I remember thinking that he was a selfish scrooge who had made up a ridiculous excuse to avoid lending me the book.

But now that I am older and wiser, I wonder if he had been speaking some version of the truth. Was he, as I have grown to be, a collector of books, many of which he had read partially or not at all? And at any given moment, was he planning to read one or the other of the several unread books he possessed? Why, then I understand him perfectly—because I share all those attributes with him. Although, I dare say that I have not yet achieved the sangfroid to tell a would-be borrower of a book from my modest library that I read all my books at once! Nor have I been able to banish a tiny stab of embarrassment when a visitor, coming to my flat for the first time, takes a look at my overflowing shelves and exclaims: “Wow, so many books! Have you read all of them?’’

My ever-burgeoning TBR stack

That question—sometimes delivered artlessly, but more often than not with a hint of snide disbelief—makes me clear my throat and say apologetically that, err... I have read most of them, barring a few here and there. It also makes me thankful that my interlocutor has not seen the tower of to-be-read (TBR) books on my nightstand, nor the messy pile of unread volumes on my study table. That would definitely have elicited more probing questions about my books and their levels of read-ness.

So why do I continue to buy books when I have so many alredy languishing in my ever-burgeoning TBR stack? (There are unread books on my Kindle as well.) Well, first of all, it is not easy to kick the book-buying habit. And, second, you buy a book because you are drawn to its irresistible potential to engage and inform, not because it is an item to be balanced in a profit and loss account: so many bought, so many read, and so on.

Some books demand instant gratification. Others do not. So I do not get around to them for a few weeks. Or years. Or maybe, ever. Then there are those that I may read just a bit and put aside, letting them lie in suspended animation, as it were—like cryogenised astronauts who will be brought back to life in the future.

Of course, some of my books never find their way back from oblivion. For example, I know that I shall probably finish reading the delightfully edifying SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard at some point. But am I likely to have another crack at William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which I picked up decades ago and which has since lain mostly unread? To be honest, no.

Some books demand instant gratification. Others do not | Photo Credit: Getty Images/ iStock

The Japanese have a lovely word for the act of buying books and letting them pile up without reading them. It is called tsundoku, and I discovered it at about the same time that I came to know Japanese it-words like ikigai (that which gives purpose to one’s existence) and wabi-sabi (being at ease with imperfection). The great thing about tsundoku is that it does not have any negative vibe. It is a guilt-free word, one that expresses a Zen-like acceptance of the fact that some of us end up buying more books than we will ever read.

In his book, The Black Swan (2007), the Lebanese-American author Nassim Taleb wrote: “The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means… allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.’’

Unread darlings

I am not a fan of Taleb’s coinage for one’s hoard of unread books. “Antilibrary” reminds me too much of words like “antisocial” or “antipathy”, or even “anti-Christ”. Moreover, it seems to suggest that our unread darlings are at an antagonistic remove from the other books in our library. But Taleb has a point when he says that the more you read, the more you see the heap of your unread books growing bigger. Every reader and collector of books will probably testify to this paradox.

Which brings us to the question of space. Since the physical space at one’s disposal is finite and the act of accumulating books seemingly infinite, I do try to prune my collection from time to time. You would think that is when I axe some of my unread books, just as I bundle out clothes that I have not worn for several years.

But you know what? I have never given away a single unread volume. To me, these books are precious precisely because they are unknown. Because they hold within them the possibility of unimagined knowledge and uncountable delights that I will perhaps encounter some day.

It is like John Keats said: “Heard melodies are sweet / But those unheard are sweeter.”

Shuma Raha is a journalist and author.