Words

It turned out that what I had always considered to be a bad personal habit is in fact common enough to have a name, not in English, it’s true, but in Japanese: Tsundoku.

“Leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with other unread books.”

What brought this to mind was that I finally, after a delay of several years, got around to reading Kate Atkinson’s “Transcription” and “A God in Ruins”.

Why had those books sat for so long unread? I remembered enjoying Atkinson’s earlier books, yet these two were at the bottom of an increasingly tall stack of unread novels.

My excuse is that I obtained those two at about the time of my great cross-country move which upended absolutely everything.

Arriving in Cambridge, I quickly acquainted myself with the local bookshop. Periodically, local authors come to give talks at Battenkill Books and one of those was Archer Mayor. I had never heard of him and I didn’t attend the talk, but I was interested enough to purchase one of his books, being that his character, Joe Gunther, is a detective in Vermont.

That book, “Open Season” got me hooked and before long I had read the whole series which I passed on to Grant who also enjoyed them.

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We both found pleasure in reading a continuing series of stories and this prompted me to search for others, discovering that there are many!

Thus the Kate Atkinson books sat neglected until very recently.

The thing about reading a series is that you become acquainted with the author’s style. You grow comfortable with it. Obviously. If you didn’t, you would hardly keep reading.

Returning to Atkinson, I had to re-adjust. Her style felt unfamiliar. The other books that I’d read were abandoned prior to my move, so I could not go back for a refresher, but what did it matter? Whether the style had changed, or I had simply forgotten it was of no consequence.

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The word Tsundoku appeared in a book called “Lost in Translation” by Ella Frances Sanders.

“An illustrated compendium of untranslatable words from around the world.”

Periodically, I pick it up and dip in randomly. The words are wonderful:

“Luftmensch”: Yiddish. Someone who is a bit of a dreamer. It literally means “air person”.

“Saudade”: Portugese. A vague, constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, a nostalgic longing for someone or something loved and then lost.

“Cafune”: Brazilian Portugese. The art of tenderly running your fingers through the hair of somebody you love.

There is a place for such words and many others that are listed.

Though perhaps not: “Pisan Zapra”: Malay. The time needed to eat a banana.

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Here are an amusing couple from German:

“Warmduscher”: Refers to someone who would only take a warm shower (not an icy cold or burning hot one) implying that they are a bit of a wimp and unwilling to step outside of their comfort zone.

“Drachenfutter”: Literally ‘dragon-fodder’. The gift a husband gives his wife when he’s trying to make up for bad behaviour.

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It seems there are words for everything. The fact that we may find the word we need in a language we do not speak confirms to me that we are more alike than we are different.

Re-reading that sentence, I wonder if it makes sense, but what I mean is that we sometimes find expression for our thoughts and feelings in other cultures, though none exists in our own. There is therefore benefit in acquainting ourselves with people from elsewhere.

There is always something to be learned.

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Here’s a last poignant one: (You may know it)

“Hiraeth”: Welsh. A homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to, the nostalgia and grief for the lost places of your past, places that never were.

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I may have posted this recently, but it fits here.

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