''Tsundoku'' ( ja, 積ん読) refers to the phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them. It is also used to refer to books ready for reading later when they are on a

bookshelf A bookcase, or bookshelf, is a piece of furniture with horizontal shelves, often in a cabinet, used to store books or other printed materials. Bookcases are used in private homes, public and university libraries, offices, schools, and booksto ...

. The term originated in the

Meiji era The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...

(1868–1912) as Japanese slang. It combines elements of ''tsunde-oku'' (, to pile things up ready for later and leave) and ''dokusho'' (, reading books). As currently written, the word combines the

characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

for "pile up" () and the character for "read" (). There are suggestions to include the word in the English language and in dictionaries like the ''

Collins Dictionary The ''Collins English Dictionary'' is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. The edition of the dictionary in 1979 with Patrick Hanks as editor and Laurence Urdang as editorial director, was ...

''. The American author and bibliophile

A. Edward Newton Alfred Edward Newton (1864–1940) was an American industrialist better known as an author and avid book collector. He is best known for his book ''Amenities of Book Collecting'' (1918) which sold over 25,000 copies. At the time of his death, ...

commented on a similar state in 1921.

References

Book collecting Book terminology Concepts in aesthetics Concepts in epistemology Japanese aesthetics Japanese words and phrases Words and phrases with no direct English translation {{japan-culture-stub

See also

References