Do you accumulate books and not read them? There is a word for it

In a pile of the nightstand as if they were keeping our dream, accumulated in a reserved shelf of the library waiting their turn or camouflaged among others, the books we haven’t read they accompany us between waiting, anguish or security and define, also by lack of concreteness, the imprint of a reader.

The Japanese were the first to put it into words: they call “Tsundoku“Anyone who buys books and, for lack of time, for object fetishism or simple postponement, piles them up.

Where does this word come from? “Tissue“can be used as a verb meaning”read“. O”Tsun“comes from” Tsumu “, which is”stack“.

Is this another of the typical accumulation mechanisms of capitalism? Do they function as a safeguard? Did the Kindle bring a different stock? What does the “unread” say about a reader?

The writers Paula Vázquez and Paula Puebla, the director of the Fundación Huesado Leandro Cahn, the creator of the book club Pez Banana Florencia Ure, the political scientist Mario Riorda and the editor of Siglo XXI Raquel San Martín share passion for reading but they admit whims and varied strategies in front of the texts which await them.

“I still have stacks of accumulated books. Both on paper and on the Kindle that I have waiting to read, ”says Paula Vázquez, author of The stars Yes Women’s luck and one of the owners of “Lata peinada”, the Latin American literature bookstore based in Barcelona and Madrid.

The formats seem to generate a different link with “the unread”: “The Light up I only use it at night, in bed, because it prevents me from turning on a light. There, I have a more anxious, administrative-professional reading. I quickly search for what I was looking for. On paper, it’s different. The pile does not give me anxiety and in fact I read several at the same time: novel, short story, essay or poetry and I mix it up “.

For the writer, the books they are waiting for “their moment” although this criterion does not imply any pattern: “Sometimes I buy something and I have it in the pile of earrings and the like for a long time, I start it in the coffee shop of the bookstore. I don’t respect the order of the last ones I bought. It’s absolutely whimsical. “

Juan Forn’s day

Writer and editor Juan Forn he also believed in this kind of chance encounter at the right time. In I will remember for you, his latest book, tells how this instance led him to create the mythical covers when he settled near the sea: “My obligations were reduced to looking at the shelves of my library. Three out of five books in this library haven’t read them when I got to Gesell. The vice of every voracious reader: to buy books to have them, to read them one day. Well, the day had come. “

Methodical, writer Paula Puebla, author of the novel A life in the present and the essay book Damn you are, share on Twitter the list of what you actually read. The latest one, number 59 from 2021, is You have to go to the housesby Ezequiel Pérez.

“I made the list to see how much I read and because I also have a really bad memory with some information like titles. And I shared it because I thought it might interest others, to activate the conversation on these readings, “he explains.

“I am from open to interpretation -defined-. I read four at a time. Some people are waiting for me at the bedside table and, when the situation gets out of hand, I move them to a makeshift corner of the library, ”he says.

What the pandemic took away

To the political scientist and executive director of the Fundación Hupedes Leandro Cahn enjoys reading novels on Kindle. “The pandemic made it very difficult for me to move forward because I don’t have the time. Before, travel and vacations were the occasions I used to attack the unread,” he recalls.

He also acknowledges that he is served of the accumulation of his wife, “a great reader who brings together”. And he accepts that sharing the heaps of earrings carries risks: “We have different tastes. I loved it. The Nix from Nathan Hill and she didn’t even want to rip him off. “

“To have more books than I can read“, he admits, with true tsundoku resignation, Florence Uré, who after having worked for many years in publishing houses, with the writer Santiago Llach founded “Pez Banana”, a subscription book club.

She knows, however, that the method can beat resignation: “I have always had a shelf for earrings and I never completely destroy it. On vacation, I move on. And every time I finish with some working reads, I know there’s something good about this shelf. waiting for me. “

The library of Mario Riorda, political scientist, political communication activist and president of the Latin American Association of Election Campaigners, is impressive: books line the walls of the office he has set up in his house in Cordoba.

“More than a bunch of unread, I’ve got hundreds, thousands. They are mixed because the organization is more or less thematic and they move when I rearrange the library. Suddenly when I write a book there is more than a hundred on the table around my computer or thirty by the bed, ”explains Riorda of the dynamic that is generated between what is read, what is not read and what he writes.

In his novel The library of rejected books (2017), the French writer David foenkinos tells the story of a librarian who receives and protects in a library in the village of Crozon the manuscripts that were rejected by editors.

On vacation, an editor and her writer husband visit the library of rejected books – condemned to be “unread” – and discover a book destined to be a bestseller, The last hours of a love story, a novel written by a certain Henri Pick, who died two years earlier. The chance of the discovery and of this unforeseen reading drives the rest of the novel.

Those who are waiting

Perhaps because she knows closely how a book is born and is constantly exposed to the potentiality of the object, Rachel Saint-Martin, editor in Siglo XXI, journalist and poet in training, locates those who have not read in a specific place in the library and welcomes them lying down and not standing.

“A pile forms that from time to time I look, go through, take apart and reassemble, set up the one who at this point I think will be next. It doesn’t sound like a to-do list but rather a promise; They do not generate anxiety, but expectation and, I admit, a certain tranquility. They are waiting for me, ”he confides and accepts that the first thing he accumulates are the recommendations he values.

He also has “wish lists” in the bookstores he usually buys online, but also in his head, on papers where he writes down the ones he would like to have soon. “Books open the door to other books,” defines this almost infinite mechanism that guides reading.

What does “unread” say about a reader? What is at stake in this chain of decisions which leads to opening up one and not the other? “Obviously not all of them will be read and some will not even be known, but they have the potential to be discovered and surprise me”, assumes Riorda about the link he establishes with this part of the library and believes that more than anxiety, they give him security.

From his role as a bookseller in Lata Peinada, Vázquez has seen and interpreted various tsundoku. Often they buy books that are not going to be read or at least not immediately and think that it may be related to a certain mandate of canonical readings, fundamental readings or by the urgency of the news.

Among these hypotheses, it also saves the possibility that a certain fetish: “The book is a perfect, insurmountable object, like the wheel. And having it in your wallet, running your fingers on the cover, feeling it, generates a certain bond, an intimacy, even love. Before or after reading.”

Telam

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