Good Reads

I’ve been working very hard for month a now bringing this blog up to speed. It’s been much more intense process than I imagined. Not only did I discover far more material, half written and in dire need of editing, than I expected, but every time I sat down to work on something old, something new would pop into my head and I’d pause to write that down, and often expand on that first thought… basically, the overwhelming pile of half finished material grew more than it shrank last month.

Along with the in progress blog posts, a stack of reading material also grew. The Japanese have a word for this pile:

Tsundoku is the condition of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them. It comes from “tsunde-oku”: to pile things up ready for later and leave, and “dokusho”: reading books.

It is also used to refer to books ready for reading later when they are on a bookshelf.

It’s an excellent word which I will be using from now on since it is very much a word that fits my experience, even though the majority of my stack is virtual and lives on my Kindle. It’s very easy to get carried away when your reading stack is out of sight.

Recently someone asked on the Atheopagan group for recommendations for books to read and received in reply a link to the Goodreads Atheopagan Bookshelf. Many of the books are in my Tsundoku (both virtual and real) already, some partially read, some actually finished, but not enough of the latter, so it made me feel a bit bad. It’s not like I’m not aware of my lack of progress reading of late, but the reminder is still guilt-making.

Plus, there’s a whole lot of other books, spiritual, pagan, science, philosophy, writing and more that I’d like to get around to at some point as well. I thought it might be a good idea to have my own Goodreads bookshelf.

Needless to say, I’m getting very little done in the “bringing up to speed” department today. First of all, I went through my tsundoku (I meant it when I said I was going to use this word from now on) and made a list of all the books that I bought specifically to broaden my horizons and knowledge on the spiritual, better person, nature-loving, science believing front.

I also added to that list books I don’t own, but want to read. Plus some books I’ve already read, including fiction ones that I feel have some bearing on my views, and perhaps they will resonate (for good or bad) with you as well.

MJ Saison’s Goodreads A work in progress, just like the blog. I think it’s a good start, a nice cross section of the books I’m hoping to read, am reading, or have read. Now it’s time to get back to the backlog of blog posts.