Tsundoku
The Japanese concept of tsundoku is the phenomeneon of acquiring books but letting them pile up without reading them. It’s a portmanteau of two Japanese words meaning “to pile things up ready for later and leave” and “reading books.”
The term is also used to refer to books ready for reading later when they are on a bookshelf. In the West it has a negative connotation of a hoarding mania with no realistic expectation of getting around to reading the books.
I’m choosing to use the more optimistic interpretation of “books are good, there’s no such thing as too many” and “I’m definitely more likely to read them if I have them on my bookshelf.”
Books, books, books
This is what I’m reading at the moment, have piled up to read in the future, or have read in the recent past.
Aesop’s Fables
I’m going through this looking for little stories to tell the children.
Un Llarg Hivern - Colm Tóibín
Most of what I’m reading in Catalan these days is from our local global Irish writer just up the valley.
Notes of a Native Son - James Baldwin
The short stories to follow the previous Go Tell It on The Mountain.
Bestiary - Julio Cortázar
Another big collection of short stories that I’m dipping into and out of for about a year now.
Girl in a Band - Kim Gordon
If she’s not the coolest female bass player called ‘Kim’ of all time, then she’s in the top two. One of the best music books i’ve read.
Collected Stories - Vladimir Nabokov
Another dip-in-and-out short story collection. I have to read it in little bits, otherwise I get overwhelmed by the beauty of the language, and the little vignettes of minor characters, created on a whim and then disposed again.
A Manual for Cleaning Women - Lucia Berlin
Took me a few years to find this, after endlessly seeing on those lists of ‘Important Writers.’ A wide ride of interlinked stories, recurring characters, and a notion that it’s not really fiction.
A Year with Swollen Appendices - Brian Eno.
When this first came out, 25 years ago, I didn’t ‘get’ Eno and was quite argumentatively dismissive. I wasn’t even young and stupid then, just stupid. In the last ten years or so I have been a little obsessed with Eno’s work, so it’s time to revisit this.
Rememberings - Sinéad O’Connor
Oh Sinéad. Some days I want to talk all day about Sinéad and what she means, but then I can’t formulate a single sentence.
Un casa al Pallars - Colm Tóibín
Tóibín, of this parish, has this Joycean knack of making the local be the universal.
Shallow Time: The Burren - Tom Cookson
A philosophical meandering hung around descriptions of the Couny Clare limestone landscape.
Dubliners - James Joyce
An annual reread, always a joy over Christmas, always something new. The master.
Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin
Another one I read because it kept coming up on those lists of Important Books. And, unsurprisingly, it’s quite brilliant, even for someone with no patience for things religious.
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
It’s been about 35 years since I read this and then lost myself for years in the fiction of Lev Nikolayevich - time for a reread.
Invisible Wonen - Caroline Criado Pérez
Data-heavy excoriation of how women are made systematically invisible in the world, where maleness is the default.
Lying for Unity - Michael Strubell
Commentary on the work of the Spanish deep in undermining the Caralan independence movement.
Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett
I’ve probably seen this play more than any other, but time to reread the text.
