The term “tsundoku,” in Japanese, refers to the habit of acquiring more and more books and allowing them to accumulate on shelves and pile up on the floor. This is not viewed as a manifestation of neglect, but rather one of hopefulness, perhaps a self-consciously naive, quaint one: some day, maybe still during this lifetime, in the fulness of the unknowable future, you will find the time to get to them, all those stories patiently awaiting to be discovered and explored.