Tsundoku: The Art of Buying Books and Never Reading Them

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BBC News |
Tom Gerken

Do you have a habit of picking up books that you never quite get around to reading?

If this sounds like you, you might be unwittingly engaging in tsundoku - a Japanese term used to describe a person who owns a lot of unread literature.

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By his definition, those afflicted with bibliomania were obsessed with unique books such as first editions and illustrated copies.

But two centuries later, the term would no longer be about obsession - according to Oxford University Press, it has been shifted to "passionate enthusiasm" about collecting.

While the two words may have similar meanings, there is one key difference: Bibliomania describes the intention to create a book collection, tsundoku describes the intention to read books and their eventual, accidental collection.

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