Tsundoku

On unread books

In the past I’ve given myself a bit of a hard time about the number of unread books that have accumulated around me over the years.

There’s a critical part of me that says it’s overconsumption masquerading as intellectual curiosity. Or worse. Almost as though, by buying the books and having them nearby, I’m somehow absorbing their contents by osmosis.

But more recently I’ve softened the criticism.

Somewhere in the background I knew there was a Japanese word that sits in this territory.

The word is Tsundoku, which roughly translates as the habit of acquiring books and letting them pile up without reading them.

What’s interesting is the tone of it.
It doesn’t come loaded with judgement. It’s not framed as something to fix.

It feels closer to a kind of gentle self-awareness. When it’s not excessive, it’s almost an acceptance of very human behaviour.

Which is a long way from what’s been gnawing away at me.

And so the more I sit with tsundoku, the less convinced I am that unread books are a waste of space.

I’m starting to see them less as failures, and more as signals in progress.

Yes, they sit there.
But they also hold a kind of intention. Small physical nodes of potential in a sea of distraction.

Things you were drawn to, even if you didn’t fully know why.
Things you might not be ready for yet, but don’t want to lose.
Things that might return to you later, at the right moment.

But not always through the book itself.

Sometimes through a conversation, a note, a search. A different medium entirely.

But it started there. With the book.
And maybe that’s enough.