Edited by Jim McCrory, Wednesday 3 September 2025 at 08:22
I Confess, The Addiction is Called Tsunsho
I was wandering through Waterstones on Argyle Street, Glasgow, when my eye was caught by a bookshelf I swear had never been there before. It was as though it had sprouted overnight like a mushroom after rain. And what a mushroom—an entire shelf dedicated to writers’ notebooks. Every possible shape, colour, and size. Some even masqueraded as Victorian novels, the sort you expect to smell faintly of dust and old libraries.
Naturally, I was helpless. I picked one up, then another, stroking the covers like some Victorian opium-eater handling forbidden goods. They all looked so dignified, so promising. I could almost hear them whispering: Buy me, and your great novel will practically write itself.
But here’s the rub: at home I already have a drawer full of these things. All pristine. All untouched. A silent mausoleum of ambition.
The Japanese, with their flair for naming life’s quirks, have a word for buying books and never reading them: tsundoku. It's about stacking them up so they radiate intelligence while the owner remain exactly the same.
But what of notebooks? Where’s the term for compulsively buying blank pages, as though the very act of possession might infuse you with genius? Tsundoku may be noble neglect, but my vice is more tragic. A notebook bought, and never written in, feels like adopting a pet and then refusing to feed it.
Tsunsho a neologismsuggested by ChatGPT sounds as good a name for this addiction as any:
Tsunsho (積ん書) made up from 積ん (tsun) : “to pile up, accumulate” and 書 (sho) : “writing, book, document”
I Confess, The Addiction is Called Tsunsho
I Confess, The Addiction is Called Tsunsho
I was wandering through Waterstones on Argyle Street, Glasgow, when my eye was caught by a bookshelf I swear had never been there before. It was as though it had sprouted overnight like a mushroom after rain. And what a mushroom—an entire shelf dedicated to writers’ notebooks. Every possible shape, colour, and size. Some even masqueraded as Victorian novels, the sort you expect to smell faintly of dust and old libraries.
Naturally, I was helpless. I picked one up, then another, stroking the covers like some Victorian opium-eater handling forbidden goods. They all looked so dignified, so promising. I could almost hear them whispering: Buy me, and your great novel will practically write itself.
But here’s the rub: at home I already have a drawer full of these things. All pristine. All untouched. A silent mausoleum of ambition.
The Japanese, with their flair for naming life’s quirks, have a word for buying books and never reading them: tsundoku. It's about stacking them up so they radiate intelligence while the owner remain exactly the same.
But what of notebooks? Where’s the term for compulsively buying blank pages, as though the very act of possession might infuse you with genius? Tsundoku may be noble neglect, but my vice is more tragic. A notebook bought, and never written in, feels like adopting a pet and then refusing to feed it.
Tsunsho a neologism suggested by ChatGPT sounds as good a name for this addiction as any:
Tsunsho (積ん書) made up from 積ん (tsun) : “to pile up, accumulate” and 書 (sho) : “writing, book, document”
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