No. 141 - 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’ll 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
*Composed, Edited, and Published in Atlanta, GA
