Tsundoku: The Desire to Buy More Books Than You Can Read

Alarie’s Christmas books, 2018

Since you’ve visited a poet’s blog, I’m guessing you’re an avid reader and share my addiction: tsundoku (appropriately pronounced sin-do-ku). I’m grateful my husband gave me at least 4-6 months’ reading for Christmas. He’s found a few more books hiding in his closet, so those will be birthday gifts. I never quite finished last year’s books, only because they were constantly replenished.

The timing couldn’t be better. If you’ve read much of my poetry, you know I don’t like winter. I grew up in Tidewater, Virginia, and have never adjusted to the harsher cold of Kansas City. I’ll be cocooning with my books and big pots of soup. Afghan on lap, cat on afghan, husband across the room reading, too. (He gets and afghan and cat, too, if the cat feels like it.)

Our house isn’t large enough to add more shelves, so we have gotten better at letting go of books we finish. Because our house was built in 1929, we don’t have much storage space. I’ve had to let go of more of my favorite novels to make way for poetry books. It’s a good trade because most novels I can find at the library, and most of my poetry books are autographed and unavailable in libraries or bookstores.

Clutter

I’m not losing my memory –

simply clearing my closets

of facts not worn in a year.

Packing up fraying names

from the capital of Wyoming

to authors of all but favorite books.

Pitching out Latin conjugations,

trigonometry, a handful

of hieroglyphics – saved for what?

Sometimes I’m overly zealous

in what I toss away,

but I don’t regret the room

I’ve made for the new. Only

now I try names on several times

before charging them to memory.

Storage space is cramped

in old houses, and I must choose

what is worth keeping forever.

©Alarie Tennille. First published in By-Line Magazine.

My Recommended Reading from 2018

In case you need a gift idea or wish to indulge your tsundoku.

NOVELS

Care of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles

Perhaps the funniest novel I’ve ever read: a mix of dark humor, slap stick, wry, and high-brow humor. What can possibly go wrong when a British slob is invited to apartment sit in Eastern Europe for a neat freak composer/conductor with expensive tastes?

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Historic novel about what happened to children sent out of New York on orphan trains to the Midwest, where they were often treated as free farm labor, not family. Fortunately, the trains stopped in 1929 with the beginning of the Great Depression.

Circe by Madeline Miller

My favorite novel of 2018: History and myth have been handed down from a male point of view, but we get Circe’s refreshing, feminist perspective on what went down on Olympus and what Odysseus was really like.

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

A historical novel blending drama from WWI and WWII, including the story of Louise (Lili) de Bettignes, aka Alice Dubois, who was a leader in a network of women spies working against the Germans in the first World War.

MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY

A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin

Claire Tomalin, a well-known, British author and literary editor who has written biographies of Charles Dickens, Samuel Pepys, Thomas Hardy, Dickens’ mistress, Nelly Ternan; Katherine Mansfield, and more, lets readers into her own remarkable life.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Noah Trevor

As you’d expect, you’ll hear a lot about apartheid, yet Noah Trevor will soon have you laughing, too. You need to check this out for yourself. No spoiling punch lines here.

NONFICTION

Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman

Riveting case studies of an FBI agent handling thefts of arts and antiquities around the world.

Marriages Are Made in Bond Street: True Stories from a 1940s Marriage Bureau (what we’d call a dating service) by Penrose Halson

POETRY

(Poetry books get too few reviews, so you can look these up on Goodreads or Amazon to see what I especially liked about this sampling.

Blood Pages by George Bilgere

Where You Want to Be: New and Selected Poems by Kevin Pilkington

Paul Hostovsky: Selected Poems

Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukkumatathil

Blue Mistaken for Sky by Andrea Hollander

Windshift by Barbara Loots

Working Class by Robert Stewart

The World Is My Rival by Charlotte Seley

The Immigrants’ New Camera by Maryfrances Wagner

Dear Writer

A License to Lie