Tsundoku, Seattle, and a Literary Cityscape
Ms. Annabelle Evans in a few years
It’s a dreary, overcast Sunday.
The wind sits patiently, the birds aren’t chirping, and the cat naps near my feet.
I’m watching The West by Ken Burns—episode two of nine—beneath the comfort of a ceiling fan.
To my left are stacks of books I’ve accumulated in Boston, Atlanta, New York, Austin, and Highlands, NC.
Some came from Little Free Libraries in people’s front yards, a few from famous bookstores, but most came from used bookshops.
Stacked from bottom to top like a wedding-cake skyscraper, with hearty biographies as the foundation and paperbacks up top, here’s what I’m looking at:
The Essential Hemingway
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Hell’s Angels by Hunter Thompson
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Frank Lloyd Wright: American Architect by Charlotte Willard
The Poetry of Robert Frost
Hooking Up by Tom Wolfe
Golf and the American Country Club by Richard Moss
Augusta: Home of The Masters Tournament by Steve Eubanks
The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times by Gay Talese
Thy Neighbor’s Wife by Gay Talese
Skull & Keys: The Hidden History of Yale's Secret Societies by David Alan Richards
Palm Beach Babylon: Sins, Scams, and Scandals by Murray Weiss
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro
A Writer’s Life by Gay Talese
The World of the Short Story: A 20th Century Collection by Clifton Fadiman
Secret Formula: The Inside Story of Coca-Cola by Frederic Allen
Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts by Robert M. Dowling
Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw
The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century by Mark Lamster
Empire by Gore Vidal
Morgan: American Financier by Jean Strouse
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. by Ron Chernow
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
Truman by David McCullough
Winged O: The Olympic Club Of San Francisco 1860 - 2009 by Ronald Fimrite
120 Wall Street, classic wedding-cake skyscraper
And this is only one stack. My room resembles a literary Midtown Manhattan, with books standing in for skyscrapers of various heights.
Next to the bed I lay in is a table holding my most recent acquisition, The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) by Robert Caro, and a mid-century lamp purchased at Paris on Ponce before it burned down.
716 Ponce De Leon, Atlanta - R.I.P.
I don’t think the sun is going to break through today.
As a kid born in the Pacific Northwest, I call these days “Seattle”—grey, slow, comforting.
I was recently introduced to a Japanese word I’ve come to love: Tsundoku¹.
Tsundoku (積ん読) is the phenomenon of acquiring books and letting them pile up, unread. Though I read mine—eventually.
The fact that this word exists, in any language, brings joy to my life.
I’m having a Seattle day—surrounded by books and watching a Burns documentary—this is how I prefer to live.
¹How to pronounce Tsundoku: SUN - DOUGH - KOO
