as much as i hate labels this one kinda makes me laugh at myself 8)
well i do read at most of them and i'm really not a hoarder cause i have purged the shelves and donated to the library book sale.. lots of times and i'm down to only two walls covered bwhahahahahahah
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/theres-a-japanese-word-for-people-who-buy-more-books-than-they-can-actually-read_us_58f79b7ae4b029063d364226?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
ARTS & CULTURE 04/19/2017 05:00 pm ET | Updated 16 hours ago
There's A Japanese Word For People Who Buy More Books Than They Can Actually Read
Hello, fellow book hoarders.
By Katherine Brooks
Book hoarding is a well-documented habit.
In fact, most literary types are pretty proud of the practice, steadfast in their desire to stuff shelves to maximum capacity. They're not looking to stop hoarding, because parting with pieces of carefully curated piles is hard and stopping yourself from buying the next Strand staff pick is even harder. So, sorry Marie Kondo, but the books are staying.
The desire to buy more books than you can physically read in one human lifetime is actually so universal, there's a specific word for it: tsundoku. Defined as the stockpiling of books that will never be consumed, the term is a Japanese portmanteau of sorts, combining the words "tsunde" (meaning "to stack things") and "oku" (meaning "to leave for a while").
We were reminded of the term this week, when Apartment Therapy published a primer for those looking to complete book-hoarder rehab. Several blogs have written on the topic before, though, surfacing new and interesting details about the word so perfect for book nerds everywhere.
While most who've written on the topic of tsundoku use the word to describe the condition of book hoarding itself, The LA Times used the term as a noun that describes the person suffering from book stockpiling syndrome, or "a person who buys books and doesn't read them, and then lets them pile up on the floor, on shelves, and assorted pieces of furniture."
Tsundoku has no direct synonym in English, Oxford Dictionaries clarified in a blog post, defining the word as "the act of leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piling it up together with other such unread books." An informative subreddit provides even more context, explaining that "the tsundoku scale" ranges from just one unread book to a serious hoard. "Everyone is most likely to be 'tsundokursed' one way or the other," it warns.
According to Quartz, tsundoku has quite a history. It originated as a play on words in the late 19th century, during what is considered the Meiji Era in Japan. At first, the "oku" in "tsunde oku" morphed into "doku," meaning "to read," but since "tsunde doku" is a bit of a mouthful, the phrase eventually condensed into "tsundoku." And a word for reading addicts was born.
Speaking of addictions ― the term "bibliomania" emerged in England around the same time as "tsundoku." Thomas Frognall Dibdin, an English cleric and bibliographer, wrote Bibliomania, or Book Madness: A Bibliographical Romance in the 1800s, outlining a fictional "neurosis" that prompted those suffering from it to obsessively collect books of all sorts.
Bibliomania has a dark past, documented more as a pseudo-illness that inspired real fear than a harmless knack for acquiring books we won't have time to read. "Some collectors spent their entire fortunes to build their personal libraries," Lauren Young wrote for Atlas Obscura. "While it was never medically classified, people in the 1800s truly feared bibliomania."
Tsundoku seems to better capture the lighter side of compulsive book shopping, a word that evokes images of precariously stacked tomes one good breeze away from toppling over. While there's no English equivalent quite as beautiful, no one's stopping you from incorporating the Japanese word into your regular vocabulary.
"As with other Japanese words like karaoke, tsunami, and otaku, I think it's high time that tsundoku enter the English language," Open Culture wrote in 2014. "Now if only we can figure out a word to describe unread ebooks that languish on your Kindle. E-tsundoku? Tsunkindle?"
I guess i am one, too, for I have a wall of books, many that I have had for many years; but I have read all of mine 8) I kept them because I liked them.
Seeker
I mostly get books from the library. The only books I buy are those I cannot get within the library system here.
There have been two recent exceptions to this. I immediately bought Hunt For the Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher, as I read it about once a month. I consider it essential reading since it corroborates my personal CE5 experiences.
I bought The Active Side of Infinity by Carlos Castaneda because it also corroborates a couple of my experiences.
Seems to me I read that Castaneda is being excoriated as phony, but I argue he is not.
I've always wanted to be a collector of every book on the planet, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
::)
:P
Quote from: Irene on April 21, 2017, 12:11:51 AM
I mostly get books from the library. The only books I buy are those I cannot get within the library system here.
There have been two recent exceptions to this. I immediately bought Hunt For the Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher, as I read it about once a month. I consider it essential reading since it corroborates my personal CE5 experiences.
I bought The Active Side of Infinity by Carlos Castaneda because it also corroborates a couple of my experiences.
Seems to me I read that Castaneda is being excoriated as phony, but I argue he is not.
I've always wanted to be a collector of every book on the planet, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
::)
:P
Agree Irene Carlos was not a phoney and the skinwalker stories are fascinating imho.
Quote from: the seeker on April 20, 2017, 09:16:23 PM
I guess i am one, too, for I have a wall of books, many that I have had for many years; but I have read all of mine 8) I kept them because I liked them.
Seeker
Me too, I have found a lot of us are voracious readers. xo
QuoteMe too, I have found a lot of us are voracious readers. xo
along with the
hermic mystery book i also got
the secret history of consciousnessthey seemed a good choice with the questions about the timeline thing
Irene libraries are the greatest places, aren't they
ours here isn't that big but where my mom is they actually created a tax for money for their library (the area voted on it first) and it is part of the Carnegie system..my mom only has to make a request and they either buy the book for lending or get it from another library in the system....she is never out of reading material
but one of the things i really like there is that they have a dozen or so circular racks in the lobby of nothing but paperbacks and you are allowed to take as many as you want and return them at your leasure.
.how great is that .! ;D
I am always reading something, usually old books (without copyright) that I download from Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive and read on my small Android tablet. When my old PocketPC died some years ago I had to go back to reading physical books, so I read a large part of my younger sister's collection.
Although all my family has the habit or reading, my younger sister is the closest to being a tsundoku. :)
I've got 600+ books in my library. I've read all of them, some multiple times.
I used to collect. I'm loathe to get rid of them.
I think "bibliomaniac" would describe me during that era, but I did read everything I bought and borrowed.
Crazy Cat Lady :P
Counting only the books we have visible (we have some shelves with two rows of books and we have several books stored in cabinets) we have around 800, but that includes both my sisters' books, my own (only some 80) and the books we inherited from my father. I didn't count comic books. :)
I wonder how many books a library with all the books from all Pegasus members would have. :)
A hell of a lot I would say ArMap, I have noticed that it is common among the awake and aware to be an avid reader.
Every book I ever bought I read, and, in My homeless state, I have one book - Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion.