My eye was caught by a book during a recent trip to Waterstones in Manchester. It was titled, simply, ‘Tsundoku’. Nothing to do with Sodoku, the book is subtitled ‘The Japanese Art of Collecting Books.’
I flicked through the book and learned that it is about ‘the irresistible urge to touch, buy and collect books - yet not necessarily read them.’ I was immediately interested.
We love books, we have plenty of them. And we’ve lost count of the number of times that people have asked us ‘Have you read them all?’. It seems that, in Japan, collecting books that you don’t read - or at least not immediately - is not seen as odd and carries no negative stigma: in fact, it demonstrates a true love of literature.
Books are a soothing source of comfort and security. If you have more books, you have more comfort. In a changeable world, books offer a constancy that few other material things do.
So a collection of books is a store of potential pleasure, much as a cellar of fine wine might be. We have a lot of reading ahead, many books, much pleasure. But there’s no rush. We’re looking forward to each and every one of them during the years ahead. And, of course, we’ll carrying on buying even more.
And, no, we haven’t read them all. Not yet.