“Tsundoku,” the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves
openculture.com
openculture.com
I thought that going the Kindle and digital media route would have saved me from adding to my "Tsundoku", but I am back in collection mode again.
There is something about a physical book that the Kindle reading experience could never recreate. In fact I find myself spending almost twice the money because I want both formats.
Now taking the time to read them is another matter...
With Kindle if I find an interesting book I can just click it to my wishlist (which is very convenient) and I can generally trust that when I want to actually read it it is still available and not significantly more expensive. In contrast if I see interesting game on Steam at -75% the rationale for buying it is that the day I want to play it it will probably cost a lot more if I don't buy it now.
Having said that I have fallen so hard for the kindle, to the point where I have been known to complain about the really poor ui of books - two hands to operate? Pshah!
I find it helps with the obsessive compulsive, in that I can organise things into collections, which helps, and can more easily binge on a specific author.
Any time I need a book, I know I have several great ones to choose from.
So I think the advent of digital books[1] transformed my 積ん読 from a huge and ugly pile of heavy artifacts — that ultimately had to be sold at a yard sale in 2005 ($1 for all 3 gigantic hardback volumes of Comer's Internetworking with TCP/IP!!), with the remainder ending up in a landfill — into an invisible, weightless trove of knowledge and entertainment.
I haven't bought a paper book since I bought a paperback copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at an airport, just before the airplane rules changed to allow reading electronically even during takeoff and landing.
But I also spend twice the money (or maybe even ten times the money) that I used to -- but that's because I buy way more books. I tend to google for books I think I might like when I am drunk late at night, and I also buy any book which somebody I know forcefully recommends.
[1]: I mean what Amazon did: making almost all books available in convenient[2] digital form. I read digital books on my Newton and Palm devices back in the old days (1990s, Peanut Press and others, but the selection was extremely limited
[2]: convenient if you don't care about removing the DRM, which I usually don't, since I rarely read a book more than once
EDIT: Here's a visual representation:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/om9xdox53rcl1g9/Screenshot%202015-...
Some of the notably awesome books on that screen: The Son, Spin (and really, almost anything by Robert Charles Wilson, but especially Spin), The Dog Stars, Blindsight and Echopraxia, Station Eleven, Seveneves and REAMDE, Nightwoods.
Bonus: gut-wrenchingly awful books I started reading and aborted (or worse, read to the end on the misguided hope that somehow they would redeem themselves): California, The Buried Giant, Avogadro / A.I. Apocalypse, Wool, Mr. Mercedes, Terms of Enlistment.
Probably half of them I still have not read.
Still have to be sure that she doesn't look too closely at the credit card statement, though...
All the bad press that Visual Basic gets despite its popularity in the late XX century may spark some historic interest in this language in the future. Don't lose hope :)
Then there are extensions that let you save open tabs, like session budy. Or just regular bookmarking.
Having lots of tabs open isn't really in issue for some reason. I think it saves tabs that haven't been looked at for 10 minutes to disk.
I wish I were joking.
Is it serious, Doctor?
By the way, in Firefox, if you end up pinning too much tabs you are left with very few space to manage your regular tabs ... and there is no scroll buttons for pinned tabs. I should maybe fill a bug one day.
I have been thinking of kickstarting a board game where there will be 500 boxes, 499 contain blank stuff, 1 contains the stuff with the printing materials etc. As long as you leave your copy shrink wrapped yours might be the really valuable one.
It shares the same "Tsun" as Tsundoku in the form of "Tsumi" (積む/積み, stacking up) and means games that keep stacking up and never been played or finished.
(99% of these games are being acquired via HumbleBundle...).
But more importantly this phenomenon is more about the imagined instant access to something, than it is about owning things. A gaming subscription service would be just the logical conclusion to this.
Books aren't that big of a time investment when you realize that very few of them are really worth reading all of. I don't feel any qualms about putting one down halfway through. Once I feel like reading more would be masochistic, I click 'finished' and then find something else to do with my time.
This is what I like the ipad for. I don't like the idea of the ipad, but reading in the dark and pain free in hard to beat.
Yes, there is the iPad, but I like the longer battery life of the Kindle, especially when traveling.
However I'm not sure many muscles are good at being tensed for extended periods. I've always just shifted around the way I hold the book every few minutes.
Are you trying to support the book completely with your hands? I do a lot of reading while laying down with the book on my stomach or sitting with the book on a table or propped up on my knees. The only time I'm holding the book in the air is when I'm walking or cycling.
Do you use the grippers?
http://www.amazon.com/LapGear-Classic-Original-Lapdesk-45364...
[1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/ch-Size-M-Portable-Reading-Book-Stan...
Rest it on a flat surface, or use something to incline it if it helps.
Break the book before reading it (Google this).
Use both arms, and both forearms to help you hold the pages flat.
The book stand has been recommended to me by a physical therapist, who said it reduces all kinds of fatigue and can promote better posture too.
When trying to read a book in bed, I end up rotating myself and the book every few minutes so it kind of goes up-sideways-down-sideways, to reduce arm, neck, and back fatigue. People have also often suggested that the right combination of pillows would fix this problem, but I think part of it is just that other parts of my body get sore easily from so much sitting at a computer.
I'd also like a word for books that I just can't get through, for no good reason. I think I've started reading Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" half a dozen times but this book inevitably puts me off reading for a while.
Unfortunately, I only removed about 5 books — ones I'd started, but didn't like and wouldn't finish. I could probably use your new word there.
The rest fitted in a medium-sized box, so didn't seem worth agonizing about when (a) the cost to add that to the shipment was marginal (b) I wasn't paying anyway.
The Japanese term 'tsundoku' is mainly notable because it's a pun portmanteau of 'tsunde oku' (piling up) and 'doku' (reading).
If anyone is interested in learning Japanese, I have some advice:
- Do not learn polite forms until you master plain forms. Japanese is built on plain forms and polite forms are an extension of that. If you learn polite forms first, you are going to get wildly confused because everything you assume about the grammar will be wrong. People think they must learn polite forms in order to get along. Just do what all my Japanese high school students did: add "desu" to the end of all your sentences ;-). It is totally wrong and you will sound like an uneducated, hillbilly moron, but people will appreciate your effort ;-)
- Read http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar I don't think there is a better grammar guide out there. Memorize all the example sentences (if you use flash cards or Anki, then drill from English to Japanese only).
- Learn hiragana and kanji (hiragana first). Pick up katakana over time (it's not really very important). Hiragana and katakana are phonetic alphabets. Once you know hiragana you can read children's books with "furigana" (the pronunciation of kanji is written beside the kanji in hiragana). Kanji are the chinese characters.
- Do not avoid learning kanji. One thing that I discovered as I was learning Japanese is that I could learn vocabulary along with the kanji faster than I could learn the vocabulary alone. Kanji is a fantastic mnemonic and is constructed in a comprehensible way. "Remembering the kanji" by James Heisig is a great technique for learning kanji. I don't like his choice of keywords, though (some are arguably just wrong). I recommend reading the first section of the book and then deriving your own keywords. As it turns out, the publisher of the book offers the first section as a free PDF download: http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2012/12/RK-1-6th-edition...
- Read manga as a way to learn conversational Japanese. Probably this is the best thing I ever did. Yes there are characters with weird expressions (datte ba yo!) or incredibly impolite expressions (ending every sentence with yagaru), but I really doubt you will fail to pick those up ;-) Obviously don't use them in real conversations if you don't want to shock people. Generally speaking the expressions -- and especially the contractions -- are the way normal people speak in Japan. You won't get this in a text book.
- Don't read textbooks (except for Tae Kim's, linked above).
- For introductory vocabulary, the JLPT vocabulary lists up to and including N3 are excellent. Don't bother past there because it is loaded down with vocabulary that you are unlikely to use, at the expense of vocabulary that you will definitely need in every day conversations. After you memorize N3 vocabulary, just get all your vocabulary from normal reading. By all means, if you just enjoy memorizing vocabulary lists, feel free to do N2 and N1 vocabulary lists -- it won't hurt you. I just think that it is an inefficient use of time.
Hope that helps anyone who is getting started ;-)
- Try to evaluate where you want to 'end up' with your fluency. If you want a full time job in a business environment then I highly recommend learning polite forms of verbs first. The more that your practice this form, the more comfortable it'll be to use. If you want to talk casually to friends and family, then learning just the plain form is ok. If you want the slow, long, methodical approach to learning Japanese and achieve a much greater fluency, learn the plain form and the negative form at the same time along with the polite form. I highly advise against using the plain form with people you've met for the first time or are dealing with in a business setting. It's very off-putting since it feels like you're talking like a child. I recommend learning the plain form and the negative form at the same time because of the structure of Japanese verbs. Learning both of these forms at the same time will give you an immediate hint as to how all of the other verb inflections should appear. This will become apparent when you're learning conditional, potential, volition and passive verbs.
- Tae Kim's guide is good for understanding many concepts quickly but the website I prefer the most is Imabi.net[1]. It contains more content and is constantly being updated and edited to improve its content.
- Learning katakana right after hiragana is vital if you want to live in Japan. Also, try to associate only the sound with the character, not a mnemonic. Use that time to focus on your pronunciation. Many borrowed words from other languages use katakana and learning katakana at the beginning will help you remember those words faster. For example, a common word used in Japanese is トレーニング. It sounds awfully close to "training" and since it's in katakana, it gives you a hint as to what the word might mean. While katakana words are not 100% borrowed words, it certainly appears to be above 80%. Related to this, do not learn romaji as a way of writing characters.
- I agree, do not avoid learning kanji. Always learn kanji with vocabulary. I don't recommend Heisig's book if you're taking the long, methodical approach I mentioned earlier. It includes a lot of mnemonics that I don't think actually contribute to the actual kanji's reading. Plus, if you do go through the entire series, then you'll still be behind in your kanji learning. There are a lot of words that you still don't know the meaning to! For example, 八百屋 and 海老 don't mean 800 shops and ocean's old. They mean produce market and shrimp respectively. My recommendation is to learn vocabulary and the kanji readings for that vocabulary.
- I don't read manga, personally, but another way to learn conversational Japanese is by watching television shows and mimicking them! (On the other hand, I don't recommend mimicking anime.) If you like manga, then go for it! Just go for your favourite entertainment medium. If you're learning conversational Japanese, then try to find a serious language partner. Find someone who is a native Japanese speaker trying to learn your native language. Allocate 1 hour or a half hour to go over Japanese and another equal block of time in your native language. Native English speakers will have the easiest time searching for a language partner but don't give up if your native language isn't English.
- Textbooks are good for certain circumstances. I believe textbooks are good for the long, slow methodical approach. It keeps you focused and gives you goals to work towards. If you don't like textbooks, then pick up a non-fiction book and try reading! It'll force you to pause, give thought to the meaning of the sentence and look up words/grammar. The non-fiction book method will probably take longer than a textbook though, especially if you're just starting out. Fiction books will be extremely difficult because they will sometimes make up words that won't appear in dictionaries.
- I actually prefer large lists of vocabulary. I get the greatest benefit from lists of nouns since I pick those up the fastest. As the original commenter pointed out, this is definitely not for everyone. Reading books or manga will give a more entertaining method for learning new words. It'll even give you the more nuanced meaning of words. The right and wrong places to use them, etc. Check out the Tatoeba[2] project as well for example sentences using the words you're learning.
For any language you're learning, try to use the language as you're learning it. Try to come up with new sentences based on what you've learned. Try to talk to people using the new verbs you learned. Try using Lang-8[3] for writing.
Japanese is really difficult because although I've been studying it for a year and a half now, I still don't feel like I'm 'fluent'. I can give you examples of things that I've been able to achieve using Japanese but I definitely wouldn't call myself fluent. Using the CEFR, I would probably put myself between B1 and B2 for certain circumstances and maybe between A2 and B1 for other circumstances. Learning Japanese will take time, don't give up.
It's hard to self-rate your fluency ;-) I find that I am very fluent in my normal every day life. Most people say that I speak normally and I really don't spend any extra effort to speak Japanese vs English. In fact, in many situations I find Japanese a lot easier. But, I lack proficiency (one of the beefs I have with CEFR is that it conflates fluency and proficiency, though it is arguably better than some other systems). I'm pretty sure I wouldn't pass JLPT N1, for instance. Sometimes there are things on the news that I don't understand. Reading books aimed at high school level and above has me reaching for my dictionary (although I use a Japanese-Japanese one now). That kind of thing. I think my biggest frustration is where I want to talk about science with someone and I just don't have the vocabulary.
I definitely optimised for fluency in my studies and my recommendations reflect that choice. I study vocabulary and grammar as I encounter it rather than from a list (though, like I said, the N3 and below lists are remarkably aligned with reality in my experience). Most of my effort is directed towards finding realistic language that I am likely to encounter and making sure I can understand/produce it.
Just due to life circumstances, I have the opportunity to chat with a lot of Japanese children of various ages. Studies show (in English at least, and I suspect Japanese is very similar) that children acquire about 1000 "word-families" a year. Which means that a 10 year old has a vocabulary of 10,000 words (plus all the related similar words, so police and policeman count as 1 word in English). JLPT N1 has a vocabulary list of about 10,000 words IIRC, so it is interesting to compare that proficiency with that of a real 10 year old child.
In my experience, the average 10 year old child lacks a very good portion (maybe 30%) of the vocabulary on the N1 list and does not understand any of the more complicated grammar (and can't produce any son kei keigo ;-) ). So if a 10 year old child has more than 10,000 words of vocabulary and only knows about 7,000 words on the N1 list, what are the 3,000 words that the average 10 year old knows that is not on the list? Also, a 10 year old is incredibly fluent in Japanese, but is missing quite a lot of the grammar in N1. If one wants to be as fluent in a language as a native speaker, will adding grammar help?
My personal experience has been that adding proficiency at the expense of fluency slows down the process. It's not necessarily bad, and if you like studying for proficiency you should not deviate from your path. As you mentioned, language acquisition is a long road. You have to do what motivates you because otherwise it is too easy to give up. But, having said that, I still feel that optimising for fluency will end up being the faster approach, on average.
In addition to the benefits for creating new words, this is a huge help in reading unfamiliar words: even if you don't know all the nuances, you can often get the basic meaning of an unknown word from the meanings of its component parts.
[This is true of kanji themselves as well... kanji are (essentially) conglomerations of simpler kanji, and you can get some (very rough) idea of the meaning and pronunciation of an unknown kanji by looking at its parts.]