Tsundoku

Everytime someone asks me how’s life in Bintulu, I unwittingly mention that I’m doing well and also that Bintulu is a very quiet place (not that quiet is bad, in fact, I think it has been very good for me). Then people inadvertently ask if “I’ve picked up anything new?” and my reply would be, “gosh, where are your manners, you can’t go around referring to people as things..”

Jokes aside, I have not been very productive due to several reasons: I just subscribed to Netflix and the fact that I’ve watched close to nothing prior to Netflix. So there’s a lot of catching up to do and now, I kinda have time. Terribly unproductive- but then again, I realize that the preoccupation with productivity seems a better fit for them city-lot than us here in the provinces. I myself am adapting and seem to have adopted a more phlegmatic approach to life these days (could be a bad thing, I don’t know).

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I’m doing this thing where I actively attempt to instill some discipline into my life at the moment- some miniscule effort to defy the flesh man (perhaps one day, this little rebellion may turn into a coup, who knows?). So I’ve started going to the gym, trying to sleep well, trying to eat healthy, trying not to spend too much time on Netflix, etc. In other words, self-improvement. Then there’s this pile of books at home, purchased online in a moment of passion now left lying unattended. Part of the guerilla warfare against the self is to complete reading some of these books.

Anyway apparently there’s a Japanese word that describes this pile of books that people buy but never read.

Tsundoku (Japanese: 積ん読) is acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them. The first half of tsundoku comes from the word tsundeoku 積つんでおく, which means "to pile things up and leave them." The second half (doku 読どく) comes from dokusho 読書どくしょ which means "reading."

What a brilliant word- we should have an English equivalent. Or perhaps we could borrow it into the English language.

Anyway, here are the books on my Tsudoku list; I’m fairly certain I won’t get around to finishing all of them by the end of this year, but I’ll at least try.

• Lord of the Flies by William Goldring
• The day the world came to town by Jim Defede
• Unscripted by Ernie Johnson
• Living out Loud by Craig Sager
• The curious incident of the dog in the night time by Mark Haddon
• Brave new world by Aldous Huxley
• Pilgrim at tinker creek by Annie Dillard
• The living by Annie Dillard
• Unfinished tales of Nnumenor and middle earth by Tolkein
• The children of Hurin by Tolkein
• The call by Os Guinness
• Siddartha by Hermann Hesse