Tsonduku is a Japanese word that describes a person who buys books and then never gets round to reading them. I am a tsonduku, but instead of letting my piles of books continue to grow until I am eventually engulfed, I have a plan!
I’ve decided that I’m not going to buy any new books until further notice and instead focus my efforts on reading the books I already own, once read I’ll decide if I’m going to keep the book or donate it to my local library and by the end of the experiment my book pile should be drastically reduced to a small collection of books I love.
At least one hour of the time I spent reading or listening was purposefully done in these different locations:
Reading at… The National Gallery
I went to the National Gallery and found a nice comfy couch in front of the painting “An Experiment with a Bird in the Air Pump” by Joseph Wright, setting a timer on my phone for one hour, I began reading. Reading in the gallery was actually quite peaceful despite there being lots of movement around me, I found it really relaxing and the hour flew by.
I was reading: “A Trip of Ones Own” by Kate Wills, I bought this book from the Foyles on Charing Cross Rd in their Boxing Day sale when it was 50% off hardback books and have been slowly working my way through it.
“If Joan Didion was right, and we do tell ourselves stories in order to live, then a travel story is the best story of them all. And I had form for escaping in stories…“
a trip of ones own by kate wills
In the book Kate Wills, a travel writer has just ended her marriage after 12 years and is looking for any excuse to escape her life which is quickly falling apart. Kate starts the book by following in the footsteps of Egeria (a Western European nun who went on a solo pilgrimage to Palestine in the 4th century) from there we learn about lots of different white female solo travellers from throughout history, well let me be fair; there was mention of one non white traveller. For the most part I enjoyed the book but some bits did call for audible sighs of woe, e.g. when Wills writes about the year she spent in New York City, ‘I took a series of random and terrible jobs which were elevated by their New York novelty into being quite fun. I gave out fliers in Madison Square Gardens. I wiped down yoga mats at a studio in the East Village. I poured champagne at fancy parties in the Hamptons. But I spent most days just wandering around the city and found out that New York is actually a really good place to be aimless and skint.’ I just find it quite tone deaf to romanticise being “skint” especially when you’re not really skint skint and in fact are just cosplaying as a poor person for your gap year. That being said I understand the point Kate was trying to make, you don’t have to spend a lot of money in order to have a good time; in fact, I actually felt the sentiment was better made in the final chapter which looked at travel in a post Covid world. In this chapter Kate talks about the joy of going for a walk around your own city and allowing yourself the freedom to get lost and see things in a completely different light. I too enjoy going for walks like these, particularity in London, I’ve walked these same streets for my entire life and yet I continue to find things I’ve missed. Further, I did learn about some truly fearless women from throughout history and it was truly a remarkable feat that Kate managed to relate each and every one of their phenomenal stories to her divorce.
Reading on… The Tube
On my commute I’ve been reading: Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu, translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches, I picked up this proof copy for £3 a few weeks ago (just before my book buying ban started) from the second hand book shop Any Amount of Books on Charing Cross Rd.
“Braiding prose poetry with bachata lyrics and the gritty humour of Canary dialect. Dogs of Summer is a brutal picture of girlhood in the 90s and a story, told with exquisite yearning of a friendship that simmers into erotic desire of over the course of one hot summer.”
blurb dogs of summer by andrea abreu
I loved the absurdity of the book and the sense of place was brilliant, I could really imagine the rural town in Tenerife where it’s set, the fact that all the houses are on a hill and everything exists on a slant. The main character of the book who is only referred to as “Shit” and her best friend Isora spend their summer playing barbies and dreaming about going to the sea. The writing is delicious and there is absolutely no plot, I think this helps capture how boring it gets in small towns and how the monotony of day to day life leads our characters to do increasingly bizarre things, like going to a field and pissing themselves just to see how it feels. The book is unsettling, it gets under your skin and makes you feel itchy but overall I enjoyed the writing and would like to see what Andrea Abreu writes next.
Reading in… Bed
I’ve been trying to dedicate an hour before bed to reading, so I have a bath, get a cup of milk oolong (my favourite tea) and settle in with my book. I’ve been reading: It’s Not About The Burqa which is a collection of essays edited by Mariam Khan. I bought this book in August 2020 from Foyles on Charing Cross Rd.
‘Here are voices you won’t see represented in the national news headlines: seventeen Muslim women speaking frankly about the hijab and wavering faith, about love and divorce, about feminism, queer identity, sex, and the twin threats of a disapproving community and a racist country.”
blurb It’s Not about the burqa edited by mariam khan
My favourite quote from the book
From Mona Eltahwy’s essay “Too Loud, Swears Too Much and Goes Too Far”
“A revolution is ‘too loud’: it defies, disobeys and disrupts patriarchy. The revolution ‘swears too much’: it tells racists and Islamphobes to fuck off and that you will never ally with them, and it tells misogynists – our men and other men – to fuck off and that you will not shut up. Revolutions ‘go too far’: if your community is ready for you, then you are too late. You must challenge your community. You must throw down the gauntlet of freedom to your community and dare it to accept.”
Reading and… Cooking
Whilst cooking I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, read by Emilia Fox. I listened walking to the supermarket to get the ingredients, and while chopping my vegetables, and frying an egg and buttering things, I listened and then ate my lunch in the garden and listened some more.
“Everyone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. A gift, her mother once said, not everybody gets. So why is everything broken? Why is Martha – on the edge of 40 – friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave? Maybe she is just too sensitive, someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. Or maybe – as she has long believed – there is something wrong with her. Something that broke when a little bomb went off in her brain, at 17, and left her changed in a way that no doctor or therapist has ever been able to explain.“
Blurb Sorrow and Bliss by meg mason
This book has been shortlisted for the woman’s prize which means it’s a bit of a bestseller, I know many a book snob who would put that against it, as if being “commercial” in the sense that it is readable and stocked in supermarkets is a bad thing. I personally don’t like to struggle through books and I love character driven stories, so I really enjoyed it. Sorrow and Bliss is about so many things, sisterhood, love, loss, mental illness, addiction, how it’s horrible for everyone (life) but I think most importantly it’s about how how to say I’m sorry and how to forgive. To say much more would be to give it all away.
cover photo by Gular Ates
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