Tsundoku
en.wikipedia.orgI had a bedroom converted into a library when I bought my house. It's about half filled with books now. I've read about 95% of the fiction and about 15% of the non-fiction.
I get a lot out of the library. It's a great place to work or study. It's both devoid of and filled with distraction. (I also had a bedroom converted to an office... which, except for the girlfriend's sewing table, is almost exclusively used for PC gaming...) Having all those unread books around means I'm never bored, and I'm always subtly being pushed to learn the things I want to learn.
I don't really think this word is actually a thing that Japanese people really say.
The Japanese wikipedia version of this article is also a stub, and there's only 550K results in Japanese google, which is pretty much identical to the amount if you search "Tsundoku" in English. If you search for the phrase in hiragana only, the results become even less at 75K.
It's mostly used in the kanji version (積読 or 積ん読) (7m+ results).
I was willing to believe it was real because it reminded me of a word actually used by Japanese: tachiyomi, which means "standing reading". A.k.a. what manga fans do in the bookstore, reading manga right there in the aisles and attracting the ire of the bookstore owner.
Since the phenomenon itself does definitely exist and there is no single word for it (that I know) I am all for using tsundoku for it :)
Right down there in the other "Book Collecting" articles it literally says:
> Bibliomania (tsundoku)
There very clearly is a word for it. Bibliomania.
Oxford says bibliomania = passionate enthusiasm for collecting and possessing books. It doesn't say anything about whether you read them or not.
Guilty as charged. My stack is mostly out-of-date programming tomes that were worth reading when I bought them. I also have a collection of Audible audiobooks that I bought to spend my built up credits before cancelling.
Hah, this happened to me when I cancelled Audible. My solution was to use the remaining credits for the first four of the The Wheel of Time (14 novels long). But now I'm addicted and had to sign up for Audible again.
Also the credits expire, even when you are signed up.
(Also, as far as physical books, you should see my basement... Buying technical books was a business expense when I was self-employed).
> My solution was to use the remaining credits for the first four of the The Wheel of Time (14 novels long).
Thanks for the inspiration. I've been putting this off because i didn't have a solution, but just pulled the trigger.
May also apply to videogames, comics, digital media, hobby/craft supplies, etc.
It's weird that something that is meant to be entertainment can become a chore (videogames and hobbies for instance). Is it merely because we are tired or because there is another activity available that is so low energy that it becomes more desirable in comparison (e.g., watching Netflix, mindlessly browsing the internet)? Sometimes I wonder... if none of those activities were available in my house, what would I do instead?
This question is highly relevant to me. I recently got a small bonus at work with the interesting stipulation that I couldn't take it in cash. (Basically, they let you expense something on the company card for personal use.)
I've been getting back into making music so I wanted to spend it on something fun related to that. And this triggered a surprisingly intense amount of anxiety where I found it really hard to decide what to get. After a lot of soul searching, the understanding I reached was:
There are two flavors of happiness I'll call "joy" and "satisfaction". Joy is stuff where the act itself is intrinsically pleasurable. Taking a warm bath, eating a good dessert, a conversation with close friends. Pleasures to the senses that require no effort on your part. Satisfaction is stuff where having done the act feels good. Writing a short story. Cleaning the garage. You only get out of it what you put into it. If you've heard of "type 1 fun" and "type 2 fun", it's that same distinction. In practice, most hobbies blend the two.
There's a sort of third in-between category for activities whose joy/satisfaction ratio is skill dependent. Sitting down at a piano when you don't how to play well is almost pure satisfaction. It's uncomfortable and repetitive. It doesn't sound great. Your fingers hurt. But you feel good about making progress practicing the skill. Sitting down to play piano when you have mastered it is very enjoyable. You get to perform and it feels good seeing your body create the delightful sounds you hear in your head.
My experience is that the hobbies where people acquire the stuff but then don't use it are the ones that weight more towards satisfaction than joy, and in especially the ones that are skill-dependent. YouTube makes the latter particularly failure prone because there are infinite videos of people who have mastered skills that make the hobby look like pure joy.
(For me, the realization was that since I wanted to maximize joy, I should get gear that built on my existing music skills instead of requiring me to learn more to get fun out of it. I got a little MIDI keyboard and a looper pedal since I already know how to make music on a computer and play a little guitar and those make that existing skill more rewarding.)
>This question is highly relevant to me. I recently got a small bonus at work with the interesting stipulation that I couldn't take it in cash. (Basically, they let you expense something on the company card for personal use.)
That sounds like tax evasion
You do still file an expense report so I feel confident that it's on the up-and-up for tax purposes. The docs said they did research and people got a greater sense of reward from bonuses like this instead of just having the number in the next direct-deposited paycheck be slightly larger.
Anecdotally, it certainly made a larger emotional impression on me. I had gotten a similar cash bonus a while back that I intended to also use for music stuff and basically procrastinated figuring out what to get until I forgot about it entirely. This time I actually got something and then sent a nice email to the person I got the bonus from thanking them.
It's been a really nice experience.
I've understood expense reports to be buisness expenses that were first paid for by the employee and the employer compensates them for it. In that case it's not taxed as income as it was never really anything the employee "got".
It all depends on how your company accountants do it, they could be doing something unusual, but the way you've described it sounds like tax evasion.
I dont really care, but if you like the benefit you may not want to bring it up in public forums.
> Basically, they let you expense something on the company card for personal use.
Gold bullion.
> May also apply to videogames
Made particularly easy thanks to the Humble Bundle. Probably half of my Steam collection consists of games I got from bundles I bought just to get a particular title, and I didn't have anyone to give the rest of the Steam keys to.
Somehow my brain saw "cats" in there.
Me and my wife does it because we value and want to reflect to our kids and others ...there's no English word descriptive enough here... but in Greek it's called paideia, German: bildung. Danish/Norwegian: dannelse. Closest word is probably education.. but it's too narrow.
Lucky kids.
One of the best things my mother ever did for me was always have a ton of books around. Fiction, non-fiction. Garbage. Masterpieces. Even the ones I wasn't allowed to read "until I was older." I also had a grandmother that worked at a bookstore for most of her life. I have, and love, a Kindle, but I can't imagine a life without books.
Owning more books than you'll read is good for you: https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/do-i-own-too-many-books
You never know where reading will take you next.
This. I try to maintain a TBR (to be read) shelf or two at home, comprising a few dozen titles, both fiction and prose.
The reasoning is that I'd rather have a choice when picking up the next book, rather than just having to read the last one I bought; as you say, you never know where reading will take you next. Often, reading a book on a subject makes me want to check out a few of the works referenced, and before you know it, the TBR pile has increased in size...
That isn't evidence, that's a theory.
I usually buy books all excited about a topic I love (history or behavioral economics etc.) but they just pile up. Work pressure and exhaustion during the week and family stuff on the weekend is overwhelming any reading time :(
I am in the same boat, but have been making a conscious effort to get more reading in. Just squeezing time here and there. Waking up earlier in the morning, before bed when I had been winding down with YouTube videos or piddling on the internet, toliet trips. In the end it takes longer to finsh by reading fewer pages at a time, but it is working at actually reading more.
totally same. Have like books ranging from bartending to philosophy and never finishing it.
Somewhat related; when a friend bought his first home, he filled bookshelves in the living room with books that were popular in his circles as part of decorating and a means of social manipulation.
He never had and likely never will read any of them, it was primarily an attempt to buy social favor with guests. He'd just say he had a poor memory for books he read long ago whenever someone tried discussing them at a house party.
It was unnerving how effective this was.
Books do make great decorations. People have been doing the same thing for decades.
“Don’t have sex with someone who doesn’t own any books” used to be somewhat common dating advice. With e-readers, it’s not as applicable, but the principle is still good.
In some sense e-readers are an advantage, since it's less easily spoofed; instead you have to discuss the content of books with them, rather than be impressed by their collection of potentially unread paper lining the shelves.
Until they lie to you about their obsession with Middle Age poetry from the region surround the Black Sea.
The old joke about Suhrkamp: if you buy ten meters of Suhrkamp and display them you are civilized. If you read them you are cultivated.
It used to be possible to buy just the back covers of the full encyclopedia Britannica. Just for that reason.
I too find a six-sentence long wikipedia article to be "hacker" "news".
Hobbyists use GAS for a similar practice. It stands for Gear Acquisition Syndrome where you buy much more hobby-related gear that you can use. Photography, electronics and electronic music are some hobbies particularly known for this.
ugh just reminded me of all the money I dumped into modular synths
Wanna resell them? Just kidding, I won't buy anything until I can actually learn to play keyboard :)
Just checked my steam account...
I always have a pile of fiction near at hand, but I'm relatively good with getting through those. My non-fiction pile is the one that gathers the most dust...
As much as I like to buy books I have realized it is much more economical to just check it out from the library.
This is me and HN. I save so many articles to Pocket but only are ever fully read.
I am absolutely sure this was posted due to the IndieHackers newsletter
Yes. It was.
I do it with browser tabs.
Me too. Many times I have opened the same website twice but they are many tabs apart. Also if I check the first few tabs I make a trip down memory lane and see whatever I was researching 3 months ago.
I used to. Now I have a bookmark folder named "Tsundoko" that all the tabs go into on a regular basis.
....oh lord! I am not the only one then!
and i wonder why my fan is going full blast all the time.