tsundoku

1. The practice or habit of acquiring books and allowing them to pile up unread.

   synonyms:book hoardingunread book collecting

Tsundoku comes from Japanese. It is usually written as 積ん読, a playful blend of 積んでおく, meaning “to pile things up for later,” and 読, from 読書, meaning “reading.” The word has been used in Japanese since at least the late 19th century and has since been borrowed into English to describe the familiar sight of unread books accumulating on shelves, tables, and bedside stacks.

Tsundoku is an informal literary and cultural term. It is useful in everyday conversation, especially among readers, book collectors, students, writers, and anyone who buys books faster than they can read them.

Tsundoku is well known among book lovers and on the internet, but it is still a borrowed Japanese word and not common in ordinary everyday speech.

My nightstand has become a monument to tsundoku, with novels, biographies, and cookbooks stacked in uneasy towers.

She joked that her tsundoku was not a problem but a carefully curated library for her future self.

After buying three more paperbacks at the used bookstore, Daniel admitted his tsundoku was getting out of hand.

Tsundoku is the perfect word for anyone whose bookshelf seems to reproduce while they sleep. It describes the habit of buying or collecting books and then leaving them unread, often in hopeful piles around the house. The word comes from Japanese and cleverly combines the ideas of stacking things up and reading. Unlike simply being messy, tsundoku carries a gentle sense of optimism: those books are not abandoned, just waiting for their moment. For many readers, it is less a flaw than a lifestyle with excellent cover art.