These books I bought, do they not read themselves?

Or must I do it for them?

Catherine Bell
2 min readAug 2, 2022

Ouch! I have fallen off the reading wagon.

Head first down the tunnel of scrolling for days without aim or ambition. Are you out there Alice? I don’t like this rabbit hole too much at all.

The daily dive into novel and non-fiction now replaced by emus and impersonations and Formula 1 clips and endless, endless recommendations of books I’ll buy but never read.

Tsundoku.​​ Tsun” from “Tsumu” — to pile up. “Doku” — to read or reading.

Photo by Nothing Ahead: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-standing-on-stacks-of-books-5009084/

The books pile up around me as the love and joy of blurbs and biblio lingers, luring me into bookshops that invite investment of time and money. I invest in the latter. Time and time again.

Tsundoku. The bookshelves are creaking. My side sticky with a thin film of dust, his: dog-eared, adored.

Tsundoku. The Japanese word for the piles of un-thumbed books beside my bed.

I’m frozen. In this weird state of — if I’m reading, it really should be for college, but I don’t want to study, so therefore I’ll do neither.

I’m paralysed. By the plethora of classics I haven’t read (but probably pretended to).

I’m distracted. By too much of everything in one place right now.

Tsundoku. Alright. Fine. I’m going.

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Catherine Bell

Irish native. Current student teacher with a past passion for marketing and PR. Once upon a time actor/theatre maker. Continuous lover of creative pursuits.