Jenni's Page

I've been thinking recently about doing a lot of stuff that involves finishing things I started but haven't finished, i.e. W.I.P.'s, organizing my large collection of photos and albums into something that makes sense, clearing out the basement, etc., etc.

But the main unfinished activity that has been bothering me most is that over the past 20 years or so I've fallen into the habit of buying lots of books but hardly ever reading them. It's dangerously close to "Tsundoku", the Japanese word for doing just that sort of thing.

I have managed to read a few books here and there but I've bought too many to keep up with the rate by which I can read them.

When I was a kid I started reading early. By Age 7 or 8 my father would take me to the library with him and let me pick out my own books - at that time fairy tales mostly. Every Christmas since I was 5 one of my uncles would give me a precious book from the Wizard of Oz series and by age ten I had read them all! I still have 3 of those books from my childhood, full of childish drawings that I doodled in the margins on many of their pages.

Around age ten I would hunt for books to read in the house in between library visits and one day came across a treasure trove in my parents' bedroom. In the bottom drawer of my father's desk there were a whole array of books of the kind he liked to read and I would sneak into that room and read them avidly for a couple of years before I eventually got caught.

Of course some of them were really inappropriate for a child but I read them anyway. His favourites were war stories, crime novels and sometimes the odd science fiction book. I remember being particularly impressed by a few for various reasons which stayed in my memory forever: Catch-22 which scared me half to death, The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, which did the same, even more. To this day the line "we are the Martians" sends chills up and down my spine.

But my favourites were the crime or detective novels, like Raymond Chandler's and Rex Stout's. So I recently got my hands on an old paperback of Rex Stout's called The Three Witnesses. It's a very short book but it's taking me forever to read it. I just can't concentrate on the written word anymore it seems! It's very annoying,

The Nero Wolfe novels began interesting me again because the fictional detective was born in Montenegro, a Balkan country that has intrigued me since I discovered that our famous Canadian tennis player, Milos Raonic, was born there. One day I'd love to visit it because it looks so beautiful and peaceful.

Of course my Dad eventually caught me sneaking his books out of his desk but instead of punishing me he'd take me to the library more often and introduced me to more appropriate mystery writers for my age like Agatha Christie's novels. My grandmother introduced me to historical romance writers whom she liked, i.e. Daphne DuMaurier, when I was a bit older. I loved Du Maurier because her stories were dark and sometimes terrifying, and thus I became interested in horror.

I gradually grew to love science fiction and fantasy as well as horror fiction and first read The Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was 17 or 18.

But right now I'm determined to pick up again starting with my Rex Stout book and then move on to the books I've piled up over the years without reading them. I've got lots of good ones and it looks like lots of time in which to read, so it's now time to say goodbye to Tsundoku.