The Japanese have a word for it. Naturally. The Japanese have a word for everything.
The word is “tsundoku,” not to be confused with the number game Sudoku. For you illiterates, it is defined as the “condition of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them.”
Our new friend, the late author and book collector A. Edward Newton, once said, ” Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can peradventure read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity. … We cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access reassurance.”
Bingo.
Until I learned this, I was unable to explain my weakness and addiction for books, both paper and digital. There are so many digital miracles that I find it hard to keep current. And no miracle is more mystifying than a Kindle, a handheld electronic device for reading books. Remember when you used to go to the library and put your name in for a hot, new book?
Well, with a Kindle, you simply dial up Amazon.com and review the books. When you have found the right one, you buy it and it appears on your damn Kindle in a matter of seconds. I still don’t believe it.
My particular addiction is the hard-boiled “noir” novels, and my living room floor can prove it. I must have 150 books piled on the floor after the bookcases were removed years ago. I have read all of those, some two or three times. The Elmore Leonard and Robert B. Parker novels never get old.
But I plead guilty to “tsundoku” on that damn Kindle. I just counted 30 unread and partially read books. Thirty. Talk about Tsundoku. I have no excuse, but some of them only cost a buck or two. When they send me a list of bargain books, shop, I must.
Most of them are like, “Me, Hood!” by Mickey Spillane, “The Perfect Assassin” by Ward Larsen and “Dry Bones in the Valley” by Tom Bouman. Not great literature, true, but I love them.
It’s not all noir. Some of my unread literature includes “The Boys in the Boat” by Daniel James Brown and “Late Edition: A Love Story” by Bob Greene.
Naturally, I have levied an embargo on any future book purchases until all these are read.
You know how embargoes go.
As a part of my addiction, I check the Edgar Awards periodically. These are awards for the best and brightest in the crime/detective genre, the books I love. Tragically, I checked them this week. I should know better.
There was our old friend Stephen King and his novel “Mr. Mercedes.” I am no fan of the King horror novels because I believe they rot my brain. I had never heard of this murder mystery book and had to have it. Violating all the rules of God and man, I called up Amazon and sent it to Kindle. Took two seconds. Another digital miracle.
All right. That would be it for a lifetime — or until all unread novels have been consumed.
Right.
A few days later after the embargo-busting purchase, I learned on the internet that Roger Angell, one of my favorite writers, had issued a collection of his magnificent New Yorker columns, “This Old Man: All in Pieces.” I have waded through the endless stories in the New Yorker for 40 years or more. (I skip most of them.) But I have never been more consumed than reading Angell on baseball. He made you see his beloved baseball diamond with a whole new vision.
Hey, this might be his last book. He is older than I am. I had to have it. I wanted to save this one so I bypassed Kindle and bought a real honest-to-God new book. This one will stay on my bedside from this day forth. When I have my 2:30 a.m. watering, I will have something great to read when I slide back under the comforter.
But that is IT, with a capital I and T.
No more books, for any reason. Ever.
Until Stephen King writes another detective novel.
Tsundoku.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News in Rockland for 30 years.