So many posts in my head still not written, and as usual I pile up the list and attend to the newest arrow in my thought quiver.And I loathe writing something the first days of January that reeks of New Years vows- sure enough this is in the Already Been Blogged Department (hereto after referred to as ABB).
But I saw the usual year end posts from folks summarizing 10s, scores, more books they read last year, and admire their dedication to reading. I have a regular habit of starting books and building a vertical stack of them on the beside as unreads (ABB).
With unbridled sarcasm in effect, I had an idea the make a web page listing all the books I finished reading in 2025:
The joke is lost on me, yeah. The web link is not broken, it is completely well formed HTML/CSS. Ha ha such loud laughter was heard.
But yes, I am a chronic Book Starter Rarely Finisher. I did not get to the last page of any titles this year. I wondered if there was a word for the habit of starting by not finishing books. I asked The Google for the name of a stack of unread books. And yeah, I glossed over the AI summary because there it was, in the first link returned (tell me again how web search is broken) – the Wikipedia article for Tsundoku:
Tsundoku (???) is the phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in a home without reading them. The term is also used to refer to unread books on a bookshelf meant for reading later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku
That works for me as a term worth hanging on to.
But maybe a day earlier, I spotted a post by Apostolos K. (aka A.K. how fun is that?) @koutropoulos. asking for recommendations of book tracking sites… alts to Goodreads.
My associative brain went to one of those many cool sites that have been around a while but I hardly used — LibraryThing. I’d probably made an account back in 2007 (that’s the date of the first book I added) but remember being inspired to take an email thread of recommended books into a LT collection. It looks like that the cleverly counterintuitive Unsuggester is no more.
But what do you know, LibraryThing is still there, I found my login and started trying to remember all the things it did. As it turns out I have a few Tsundoku piles, I took some quick photos, and in no time had added them to my LibraryThing account — hee hee in a new “collection” I created named Tsundoku. Here is my wall of unread shame.
Some were casual purchases but others I have full intent to finish. Will brandishing this be some kind of public vow that will compel me to read more? Again, like Doug Belshaw I loathe resolutions, though does stating them as commitments change things? (having moved his blog from WordPress to Ghost will Duug miss the trackback link?). My best experience was making a silent new years goal, never uttered until I started working on it 8 months later.
With confidence I doubt this dusting off and foray into a LibraryThing effort will change my habits. But in poking around LibraryThing I am rather impressed with all the features it has under the hood. Adding those 9 titles today took no time, it found them via s search for the title. And I can sense that there is that wisp of the Web 2.0 era gist- remember the quaint, 2008 Horizon Report darling idea of Collective Intelligence through social media?
And LibraryThing is still going after 20 years, does that not count for something? It looks like the strong willed effort of its founder, Tim Spalding.
But maybe the best thing out all this diversionary blogging today is finding the word Tsundoku.
Featured Image: A stack of books made to represent my own Tsundoku, only one there is really in my stack, thats why I turned them around. At some point soon this will flow into my flickr stream shared in the public domain via CC0.
I didn’t know about LibraryThing but I like that it seems like a project of love.
Your link to books-read cracked me up.
Kevin