The malady of piling up books

My wife, on the other hand, seems to have an irrational fear of completing them, writes Kishore Singh

My wife tells me there’s a word in Japanese for people who keep piling up books they intend to read but don’t — tsundoku. In my wife’s case, the malady is worse, since she piles up unread books alongside the half-read or partially read. Which means she begins to read what she had at least read a bit of, gets bored because it’s familiar, and leaves it all over again. She has re-read the first chapters of scores of books without completing them. I don’t know how many books she has read completely but there can’t be many of them. But read she must, so we have mounds of books by her bedside (and mine, for when she wants more space), and on the sideboards, in the car, in her travelling cases (so she re-reads the same chapters in the same books whether she is in Meerut or Macau).

I’ll admit she’s fond of books, only not just reading them in full. She likes to present books, particularly to children, because she managed to read Roald Dahl as an adult (the children’s books, I mean), and I think she may have got through a Harry Potter or two, and she talks with familiarity about Jane Austen, but that may be because it was an assignment in school and not an activity driven by literary pleasure. She tells her friends she reads every night, and it’s not a lie, but it isn’t the truth either. Because what she does is fall asleep after she’s read only a few pages, or maybe paragraphs — or it may even be a few lines. She blames it on sleep apnea, but since we’re talking about tsundoku, we’ll save the apnea for another time.

She likes to borrow books, but she doesn’t like to lend them. I don’t mind giving away airport thrillers and other pulp because it occupies space. Better to let someone else read them and clutter their space. But my wife doesn’t mind the clutter as long as she doesn’t have to part with a book. Which also means that she doesn’t like to return the books she’s borrowed but not yet read. When friends ask for their books back, she says she’ll return them later because she hasn’t finished them yet, and so it continues till they forget about them, or reconcile to not getting them back. Sometimes I return the books without her knowledge, and she’s none the wiser. I also give away books I have read, and she hasn’t, so sometimes when she asks for a title that she can remember having started, I have to pretend I don’t remember where it is.

When she goes to litfests, or book launches and readings, she comes back with books signed by the authors. Once she had a writer sign a copy for me as a special treat, but promptly gave it away to her sister. But she’s never given away a book signed by an author with her name to anyone, me included. 

I don’t buy as many books as I once used to, but when I binge and come away with a few dozen, I read day and night, sometimes staying away from work by fibbing that I am not well. If I start a book, no matter how bad it is, I need to finish it. My wife, on the other hand, seems to have an irrational fear of completing them. I wonder if there’s a word for it in any language.