Do you accumulate books and do not read them? There is a word for that

In a pile of night table as if guarding our dream, piled in a reserved shelf of Library waiting their turn or camouflaged among others, The books we haven’t read It accompanies us between expectation, anxiety or security and defines, also from lack of realism, the imprint of the reader.

The Japanese were the first to put it into words: they were called “TsundokoHe who buys books, for lack of time, out of fetish or simple delay, hoards them.

Where does this word come from? “tissue“can be used as a verb to mean”read“. NS”tsunComes from ‘Tsumu’, which ispile“.

Is it another mechanism of accumulation typical of capitalism? Do you act as a guarantee? the kindle Bring different stock? What does the “unread” say to the reader?

Co-authors are Paula Vasquez and Paula Puebla, Hosado Foundation Director Leandro Can, founder of the reading club Pez Banana Florencia Ure, political scientist Mario Riorda and Siglo XXI editor Raquel San Martín passion for reading But they admit diverse whims and strategies before the texts that await them.

“I always have heaps of accumulated books. Paula Vasquez, author of stars NS woman’s luck He is one of the owners of the Bibliotheca Lata Pinada, a library of Latin American literature based in Barcelona and Madrid.

The formats seem to create a different association with “unread”: “file kindle I use it only at night, in bed, Because it prevents me from turning on the light. There I have a more anxious, managerial and professional reading. I quickly search for what I was looking for. On paper it is different. I don’t worry about the heap, and in fact I usually read several of them at the same time: a novel, a short story, an essay, or a poetry, and mix it up.”

book writer waiting for their ‘moment’ Although this standard does not include any pattern: “Sometimes, I buy something and have a long time in the pile of earrings and other times, I start it in the library café. I do not follow the order of the last thing I bought. It’s totally weird.”

Juan Forn day

Writer and Editor Juan Forn He also believed in this kind of chance encounter in time. in a I will remember youHis latest book recounts how that condition led him to create the legendary back covers when he settled by the sea: “My duties have been reduced to looking at the shelves in my library. Three out of five books in that library were unread When I got to Giselle. The vice of every voracious reader: to buy books to read one day. Well, the day has come.”

Methodology, writer Paula Puebla, author of the novel life in the present and book articles Damn youShare on Twitter a list of what you’re already reading. The most recent one, Issue 59 of 2021, is You have to get homeby Ezequiel Perez.

“I made the list to see how many I’ve read and because I also have a very bad memory with certain information like addresses. I shared it because it seemed to me that it might interest others, to activate the conversation about those readings,” he explains.

“Who I am open to interpretation -to get to know-. I read four at once. Some wait for me at a desk, and when the situation gets out of hand, I move them to a makeshift corner in the library.”

What took the epidemic away

To the political scientist and CEO of the Hubedes Foundation Leandro Cahn loves to read novels on Kindle. “The pandemic has made it very difficult for me to move on because I don’t have time. Previously, travel and vacations were the cases where I used to attack the unread,” he recalls.

It also admits that it is presented From the accumulation of his wife, “The Great Reader Who Collects”. He agrees that sharing stacks of earrings comes with risks: “We have different tastes. I loved them.” nothing From Nathan Hale and she doesn’t even want to rip it off.”

“You have More books than I can read‘, admits, with genuine resignation from tsundoku, Florence Ur, who, after working for many years in publishing houses, together with writer Santiago Lach founded “Pez Banana”, a joint reading club.

However, she knows the method can beat giving up: “I’ve always had a rack for earrings and never quite damaged it. On vacation, I go ahead. And every time I finish work readings, I know that in this rack something good awaits me.”

Library Mario RiordaHe is a political scientist, activist in political communication and president of the Latin American Association of Scholars in Campaigns, which is impressive: books line the walls of the study he set up in his home in Cordoba.

“More than an unread pile, I have hundreds of thousands. They are mixed because the organization is more or less objective and moves when I rearrange the library. Suddenly, when I write a book there is Over a hundred on the table About my computer or thirty by the bed,” Riorda says of the dynamics that are created between what is read and what is not read and what is written.

in his novel Rejected book library (2017) French writer David Foenkinos It tells the story of a librarian who receives and protects manuscripts in a library in the village of Crozon The editors rejected it.

On vacation, an editor and her writer husband visit the library of rejected books – judged “unread” – and find work destined to be a bestseller, The last hours of a love story, a novel written by Henry Beck, who died two years ago. It is the coincidence of the discovery and that unexpected reading that drives the rest of the novel.

Those who wait

Perhaps because she knows firsthand how the book is born and is constantly exposed to the potential of the subject, Rachel San Martin, editor at Siglo XXI, journalist and poet in training, locates those who have not read in a particular place in the library and accommodates them lying down not standing.

“A pile is made that I check and reassemble every now and then, Ask the person who I think will be next at that moment. It doesn’t sound like a to-do list but it’s a promise; They don’t generate anxiety, but they do expect, I admit, some calm. They are waiting for me,” he says and accepts that the first thing he collects are recommendations he appreciates.

He also has “wishlists” in bookstores where he usually buys online, but also in his head, on sheets of paper where he writes lists that he would like to have soon. “Books open the door to other books,” identifying these endless mechanisms that guide reading.

What does the “unread” say about the reader? What is the danger in that chain of decisions that leads to the opening of one without the other? “Obviously not all of them will be read and some will not even be known, but they have the power to discover them and surprise me,” Riorda supposes about the bond he has made with this part of the library and insures that more than worry, they give him safety.

From her role as a bookseller in Lata Pinada, Vasquez has been able to see and interpret differently Tsundukos. Too often they buy books that won’t be read or at least not right away and they think they may be related to a certain mandate of Basic Reads or Basic Reads or by The urgency of the news.

Among these hypotheses, it also saves the possibility of a certain thing fetish: “A book is a perfect and insurmountable thing, like a wheel. Having it in your purse, running your fingers on the cover, and smelling it, engenders a certain bond, intimacy, even love. Before or after reading.”

blame

PK