Tsundoku: Do you buy books faster than you can read them? 📚🤔

Rob Bell:
Hello, and welcome to Sketchplanations The Podcast, facts and fascinations to help fuel your own interesting conversations.

I'm engineer and broadcaster Rob Bell, and with me is the creator and talent behind Sketchplanations, Jono Hey, and entrepreneur and past winner of The Apprentice, Tom Pellereau.

This time, we're going to delve into Jono's sub collection of sketches based on Japanese words and culture and discuss something called tsundoku.

Not to be confused with the numbers game often found in newspapers, tsudoku.

Now, you should be able to see the sketches, the artwork for this episode, but if you want to see it in full, you can also find it at sketchplanations.com.

Jono, hello.

You're right.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, good.

Thank you.

Tom Pellereau:
Now while Jono intros, I'm going to be back in a second.

Jono, you carry on.

Jono Hey:
We can just wait.

Rob Bell:
No, he's...

Tom Pellereau:
You do it.

Rob Bell:
I feel like that was an instruction, Jono.

Jono Hey:
Okay.

Rob Bell:
Let's carry on.

Jono and I look at each other perplexed, but that is often the case when we're around Tommy.

Go on, Jono.

Can you talk us through Tsundoku, then?

Is that pronounced right, first of all?

Jono Hey:
Do you know what?

I'm not a native Japanese speaker, so I'm probably with you on this.

But yeah, Tsundoku is how I would pronounce it.

Rob Bell:
So what is it, Jono?

Jono Hey:
Tsundoku is lovely.

I think it's such a lovely thing.

It's basically the act of acquiring books and letting them pile up without actually reading them.

Rob Bell:
And the Japanese have a word for specifically that.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, quite a reasonably old word from over 100 years ago, from the 1880s or so.

It's a Japanese slang, like a slightly playfully making fun of people who were slightly academic in collecting loads of books, I believe.

Rob Bell:
OK.

Jono Hey:
And that they were doing, I think it's made from a few parts, like tsunde and oku, and I think doku means to read.

And so it's sort of combined together became tsundoku.

But it basically means probably what Tom is showing you now, which is just buying a lot of books and not getting around to reading them.

Rob Bell:
Tom has returned from his epic adventure through the house and returned with a pile of how many books, tell me?

Tom Pellereau:
These are just the ones beside my bed currently.

Five I've got here.

Rob Bell:
Have you started any of them?

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, I've started all of them.

Oh, gosh.

Yeah, I've started all of them.

I think I've read most of that one.

I stopped reading and I started listening, so that's my new game, where I buy the book and then I get the Audible as well, because I do find I can listen to books more quickly.

But also, I should now go through my Audible as to how many books I've bought an Audible and haven't listened to.

Rob Bell:
Well, this is interesting, yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
Which is the new tactic.

This one, I'm about halfway.

This one, I'm at the end of Chapter 1.

This one doesn't even look like it actually opened it.

But I have listened to it.

Jono, you did tell me about this previously.

Oh my gosh, your family, Jono, your parents' house.

We'll get into that in a second, I'm sure.

Rob Bell:
Well, no, tell us about your parents' house, Jono, because I know what Tommy is talking about.

Jono Hey:
Well, I think it depends whether it's better or not.

But I think it's changed a little bit from some periods in our lives.

But basically, it's still generally the case that if you go into my parents' house and where I grew up, there are just piles of books everywhere.

Because you get the bookshelves, and they've got the bookshelves, lots of bookshelves, and they filled all the bookshelves.

And so where do you put the books?

Where do you put them by your bedside?

But I think mum's was like almost getting to the point where it was a bit dangerous, like several feet tall of books on the bedside table.

If that comes over when you're asleep, you might get a book in the face.

Rob Bell:
Is that where some of your inspiration for the sketch itself came from?

Jono Hey:
It's very specific.

In some ways, this was very easy because I just conjured my parents' bedroom at home.

And it's not exactly like that, but it's quite like that.

And I think the books come off when they go to sleep at night.

I do remember one time you coming round, Tom, and there was piles of books on the stairs go round some bends.

Tom Pellereau:
Stairs is my favorite.

Jono Hey:
So there's like little landings on the way up the stairs.

And there were various parts of books on the little landings on the way up the stairs because you can put books on flat spaces.

Tom Pellereau:
And that's what I love so much about it is because it is the creativity to use the step of a stair.

Because you've got almost an infinite bookcase.

And at one stage, I think, it came around and they were piled like three, four, five books on each step.

And it felt like they were on your left and your right as you go up and down the stairs.

Rob Bell:
Well, how much of the stair do you actually need to go up the stairs?

Only the bit in the middle where the runner of the carpet is.

Jono Hey:
It's quite lovely, wouldn't it really?

Like it's like walking up in between library shelves as you go up the staircase.

Tom Pellereau:
Your parents, they do read a lot of books as well.

Like they actually read them.

I suspect they also have very large piles of books they haven't read maybe.

Jono Hey:
I mean, I would think there's a correlation between the amount of books that are piling up and the amount of books that you do actually still read.

If you don't have many books piling up, maybe you don't get through as many books as somebody who buys tons of books, but still reads books, but just buys them at a pace, which is impossible to keep up with.

Rob Bell:
Again, Jono, I appreciate that Japanese is not your native tongue or that you actually don't speak any Japanese.

You just know a few words like this.

Jono Hey:
This is true.

Rob Bell:
But can we come on to semantics here?

Do we know if Tsundoku refers specifically to books that haven't been read at all?

You intend to read, but that haven't been read.

So Tommy's pile there, is that genuine Tsundoku if he's started some of them or moved on to the audiobook of it?

I appreciate that.

That's quite a nuanced question.

Jono Hey:
I reckon that still counts, but I know what you mean.

Maybe it's slightly different to read a few chapters of a book and then get excited about a different one and start the next one.

Maybe that's not Tsundoku, but I don't know about that.

I think you probably intend, ideally, still to read the books.

If in a perfect world, you would have read those books.

I reckon it's still Tsundoku, but it's a good nuance, Rob.

Rob Bell:
I'm definitely guilty of this as well.

I mean, I'll admit it.

I am slightly embarrassed to say that I am not a big reader.

I never have been.

But that does not turn me off from the idea and from the desire to collect books that I really would quite like to read or quite like to have read.

I've probably got about six or seven that I've bought within the last six months or so that I do fully intend to read at some point.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was going to say, Tommy, I think I have a rough idea about your relationship, if you want to call it that, with books as well and how you acquire.

But more about how you consume it.

Because I know you are a big consumer of audiobooks as well.

But I reckon it probably still applies.

Well, maybe, yeah, you could extend it to audiobooks that if you've downloaded loads that you intend to listen to at some point, but haven't quite got round to yet.

And in the meantime, you've downloaded others as well.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, I often get recommended a book.

When I was talking to someone, I almost downloaded it then.

On my audiobook account, I buy it.

And if someone's recommended it, and I respect it, and I like that person, usually I'll come and just download it.

And then every so often I open up my audiobook and go, oh, quite a lot of books here.

Rob Bell:
It does feel like a good time of year to be talking about this.

To me, I don't know about you guys, but I feel like I probably am slightly more guilty of Tsundoku in winter months than other times of the year, when just again, it's the idea of settling in with a book and you're nice and snuggly in the evening is more appealing to me.

I don't know about you guys, if there's a seasonality to it, you feel?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I think that's definitely right.

And also, you might get given a lot of books.

Books are a lovely present.

But it's a funny present because in some things, you can get some chocolate to eat it in 10 minutes.

You can give a book and to see a book to the end might be hours and hours of reading.

Rob Bell:
Months in my case.

Jono Hey:
Months, yeah, that might be quite a commitment.

So it's very easy.

It's sort of very asymmetrical.

Like you takes a moment to buy a book and it takes hours and hours to get to the end of it.

Even your audiobooks, Tom, you know, even if you put them at 1.25, you still look at the hours.

You know, it's 25 hours to listen to this thing.

Rob Bell:
So a really good point, Jono.

Is there something about the anticipation of reading a book and getting lost in, be it a new story or learning something new that's potentially more exciting than actually reading the damn thing?

Is there a beauty in that promise of a book when you first buy it, that potential it holds that, I don't know, reading it might actually diminish?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, that's a good question.

I never thought about the actually diminishing bit.

I definitely have that feeling.

I walk into a bookstore and I just want to read all of them.

We sometimes go to the library with the kids and I find it very inspiring.

If you're not in a hurry, you're like, oh wow, look, there's a book on whatever on this shelf.

I don't know anything about that.

Maybe I could just sit here for a few hours and read it.

I want to, yeah.

It's very aspirational.

We keep saying guilty, but it's not necessarily a guilty thing.

Maybe you feel a bit guilty because you kind of intended to do it, but you're not.

But I think it's a lovely thing to be surrounded by books and it sort of shows you that love of learning and knowledge.

And as you say, that curiosity that you have, you're like, oh, you go to a place and you're like, oh, there's a really fascinating story here.

So you buy the book and then you get back home and you don't have time to read it and you never get back to it.

But you still got that book on the shelf.

You wanted to read that.

Rob Bell:
And also that genuine excitement that you felt was real.

That happened.

And being in the bookstore and buying that book gave you an experience, gave you an emotion.

So in that in itself is possibly worth something, whether you read it or not.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I was wondering if it connected.

Some people have connected it to other things.

I absolutely, Tom, like audible or spoken word books, also magazines, newspapers, whatever.

It's easy to get more than you can read.

You wish you read it all, but then the next one comes.

Other people have said like browser tabs.

You leave the end of the day and you've got 15 browser tabs open with articles that you wanted to read and you didn't get to, right?

And then I was wondering if it applied to things like, you're in a different room today, Rob, but it might apply to things like guitars on the wall.

You buy these things because you aspire to it and you want to do them and you love doing them, but you don't do them as necessarily quite as much as you want to.

But it's still lovely to go buy another guitar that gives you joy.

Or if you do music, you're buying all the plugins.

Oh, that plugin is going to be amazing.

I could do amazing stuff with that and then you never get around to do very much with it.

But it's nice to collect it.

It's kind of like tsundoku for other things, which is why I think it's very aspirational.

So I think it's quite nice.

Yeah, it's a nice thing.

I think lots of people sort of feel that.

You feel a bit guilty, but you also feel quite happy with it.

I do anyway.

Rob Bell:
No, I agree.

Tom Pellereau:
They are very tactile, satisfying things, books.

Especially, I think, sort of hard cover ones.

They're suddenly really nice and clean and...

I don't know, but it's some kind of really satisfying human shape, maybe.

A little bit like notebooks as well.

And the value for money that you get, because most books really are kind of between £8 and pay maybe £25 for a hard book kind of thing.

And the hours that someone has put into, or a team has put into creating that, and the kind of knowledge they're trying to compact in, is, I think, one of the best values that you can get, really, from anything.

Historically, I suppose now so much information is completely free and on the internet and on YouTube that part of the value maybe of a book has sort of gone down.

But certainly, sorry, like this book, actually, kind of really changed my life a couple of years ago.

In many respects, you might say, this entire book has one idea.

Rob Bell:
Do you want to say what it is?

Tom Pellereau:
In huge detail.

So this book is called Rocket Fuel.

It's all about the idea that within a business, often you have kind of an entrepreneur, an ideas person will start it.

But that person is probably not really the best type of person to actually grow it beyond a certain stage.

So it's sort of trying to say that the Rocket Fuel is when you have a sort of a create potentially creative type or entrepreneur type who then finds a kind of real and amazing operator, like it's often an operations person or something with accounts background.

And that's what I did with my company a couple of years ago.

And that's really enabled it and completely changed the business hugely positively.

Rob Bell:
Do you want to name check the author as well, seeing as we got this far?

Tom Pellereau:
The name check of the author, best selling author of Traction.

Oh, Traction, I'm reading his as well.

It's Wickman and Winters.

I imagine it's also quite a team of people behind him.

I wasn't necessarily mean to plug that book, but I've had a number of books over my life that have really kind of changed my life.

They do tend to be mainly down the kind of business or entrepreneurial route.

I'm currently massively into a series of books, which is very much a guilty pleasure I'm listening to.

Rob Bell:
Sweet Valley High.

Tom Pellereau:
I know.

The Bobbyverse.

It's a real kind of sci-fi type one.

Rob Bell:
All right.

Okay.

Tom Pellereau:
The only thing I don't like about books is you kind of need to be in sort of solitude to read them.

But the best is when you can kind of hide away.

And as soon as you've got young children, you pick up a book, you go and hide somewhere.

Within 10 minutes, they will find you and they will start sitting on you.

And then the other will be like, oh, some party is going on here.

And then the other one will come in and then the fight will happen.

Okay, well, I'm not reading any more then.

Jono Hey:
Except like we've talked about in the car, sometimes in the car, you can all listen to a book.

Yeah, we have like a lovely shared book experience, isn't it?

But otherwise, you're right.

Everybody sort of sat in their own seat, reading their own book in their own world.

Rob Bell:
Because Jono, I imagine your Tsundoku passed quite high as well.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, it is high.

I've got five currently from Christmas, which is sat by my bed, which I'm getting through.

Rob Bell:
That's just Christmas.

Jono Hey:
Which I'm quite excited about.

I think I've mentioned it before, Dad's Book Club from Each Christmas, where he buys each of the siblings the same books, or in this case, also three different books, and you read it and you pass it on, and then you get to talk about it.

Rob Bell:
I remember this.

Yeah, brilliant.

Jono Hey:
So I've got those.

Rob Bell:
You've got that, yeah.

Jono Hey:
I've also got at least 20, if not more, on the little desk.

Rob Bell:
Is there a particular one that you're really looking forward to getting into?

Jono Hey:
Yes.

Sorry, I'm trying to find it.

I think it's a few short sentences about writing, is the one which I've started and I haven't finished.

Rob Bell:
How long have you had it?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I've had that a while because I had some other books and I had to read these other books first.

Yeah, those were here for a while.

Rob Bell:
I'm not looking for excuses, Jono.

There's no blame.

Jono Hey:
Well, it's quite deep down the pile, I suppose.

That's the indicator, isn't it?

Okay, I get to that, though.

It's a nice short one.

Rob Bell:
Oh, dear.

Now, I have a story from when I was a kid that is kind of, it's slightly inverted.

It's, I'll just say it.

Don't tell us about it.

I deliberately took my time reading it because I was enjoying it so much and I didn't want it to finish.

Tom Pellereau:
Nice.

Rob Bell:
It was called Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby.

Jono Hey:
This funny book.

Rob Bell:
It's from 1992.

I had to look that bit up.

And it's about his obsessive love for football.

So it's kind of autobiographical.

It's his obsessive love for Arsenal Football Club.

It reflects on what it means to be a devoted fan of something, in this case football, but it does kind of reflect on the wider sense of being a devoted fan.

And it uses specific matches as narrative of different points of his life and different life events.

And it's funny.

It's very honest.

And even as a teenager, I really loved the way that it talked about all the emotions and challenges of life.

Somehow back then I found it quite relatable, but I was probably reading a bit too much into the football side of it.

But I'm not sure I ever finished it.

Cause I just didn't save it away.

Wrapped it up in polythene and put it away somewhere.

I think I'd love it even more now.

And I wouldn't say I'm obsessed by football.

I mean, I like football.

I love my own team, but I'm not obsessed by it.

But however, the one book within my Tsundoku pile at home at the moment that I'm probably most looking forward to reading is called, Whatever Will Be Will Be a Matter of Life in Football by, by Felix White of the Maccabees fame.

And again, it's written around football.

It's not about football.

It's mainly about a sense of belonging and community in life.

And for a number of reasons, I just can't wait to get into it.

I just have to finish the book that I'm reading at the moment.

Jono Hey:
I have had people who say they've rationed out or saved big ideas, little pictures bit by bit.

Rob Bell:
Nice.

Jono Hey:
As in, you know, you don't want to read them all at once because then it's done.

Rob Bell:
This is Jono's Sketchplanations book by the way.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, but maybe they just don't want to read it all at once.

Rob Bell:
Before we round off, is there anything anyone else wants to add to this chat about Tsundoku?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, a couple of little things.

One is if you like nice things about books and you like books, Tom Gauld does beautiful cartoons about books all the time.

You should go seek him out because they're funny and you'll relate to them.

They're lovely.

Rob Bell:
I'll look that up and see if I can link to that in the show notes.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

I thought maybe I could leave you with a quote.

Can I do that?

Please.

This is because Tom, you mentioned about the value of the actual product of a book.

Books are beautiful products, but they're also so amazing.

I remember a guy I followed called Ramit Sethi, he has what he calls the book buying rule, which is if somebody recommends a book or you want to buy a book, just buy it because like you say, you might spend a tenner and get something that changes your life, right?

Yeah.

I also have somebody pointed out recently, I buy these nice notebooks, and I like specific types of notebooks, and it can cost up to 20 pounds, which is funny because you can spend 20 pound, which is more than the price of many actual books for a completely blank book.

And nobody's written in at all or poured their life's work into it.

It's just empty paper.

But anyway, so the quote was from Carl Sagan, who you might know as astronomer and philosopher and all sorts of really super smart guy.

It was on a program called Cosmos.

I learned it from Austin Kleon.

He has, what an astonishing thing a book is.

It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on, which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.

But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.

Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions.

Binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs.

Books break the shackles of time.

A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

So that's a good reason to get some more books on your bedside table, isn't it?

That's gorgeous, Jono.

Rob Bell:
That's gorgeous.

I'm not going to sully that with anything else, Tommy.

And me neither.

Oh, in summary, I would like to restress the point Jono made earlier, that Tsundoku is not a bad thing.

So embrace it.

Jono, thank you for your wonderful sketch about this topic and giving me yet another topic I find really interesting to tell other people about.

And as I said earlier, especially at this time of year, and thank you all for listening.

Please do share this episode with others you think might appreciate learning about Tsundoku.

I only have 53 pages left in my current read, so I should be good to get started on the next item in my Tsundoku pile around the summer holidays.

By which time that pile will likely be half as big again.

I can't wait.

Go well, stay well.

Goodbye.

Jono Hey:
Bye.

Rob Bell:
All music on this podcast series is provided by the very talented Franc Cinelli.

And you can find many more tracks at franccinelli.com.