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The Art of Buying Books and Never Reading Them

nuttynutskin

Bluelighter
Joined
May 15, 2011
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I think I would be good at this. Anyone else? :ROFLMAO:

Tsundoku: The Art of Buying Books and Never Reading Them

Be honest, how many books on that shelf have you actually read cover to cover?

BBC News | Tom Gerken

Do you have a habit of picking up books that you never quite get around to reading?

If this sounds like you, you might be unwittingly engaging in tsundoku - a Japanese term used to describe a person who owns a lot of unread literature.

Professor Andrew Gerstle teaches pre-modern Japanese texts at the University of London.

He explained to the BBC the term might be older than you think - it can be found in print as early as 1879, meaning it was likely in use before that.

The word "doku" can be used as a verb to mean "reading". According to Prof. Gerstle, the "tsun" in "tsundoku" originates in "tsumu" - a word meaning "to pile up".

So when put together, "tsundoku" has the meaning of buying reading material and piling it up.

"The phrase 'tsundoku sensei' appears in text from 1879 according to the writer Mori Senzo," Prof. Gerstle explained. "Which is likely to be satirical, about a teacher who has lots of books but doesn't read them."

While this might sound like tsundoku is being used as an insult, Prof. Gerstle said the word does not carry any stigma in Japan.


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