Tsundoku: Unread Piles of Books as a Working Tool

I have a lot of books. Despite a cross-country move a few years ago that involved a massive book cull, I still find myself with three overstuffed bookcases, loaded shelves, no fewer than two books on my bed while I sleep, and several piles of books around my apartment, on the floor. 

A visiting friend observed my book collection and told me about a Japanese word, tsundoku. It translates to collecting literal piles of books you don’t read. 

I started to develop some shame around my tsundoku; all those books I was buying without reading. I subsequently made a rule for myself that I wouldn't buy another book until I began whittle down my piles. I had gotten to the point where I was buying books constantly, including through Instagram, and felt like I should probably slow things down. 

Then I came across an essay by Umberto Eco called How to Justify a Private Library about why you should have a library of books you don’t read; why you should have tsundoku: 

 “...There are still people who consider a bookshelf as a mere storage place for already-read books and do not think of the library as a working tool… I believe that, confronted by a vast array of books, anyone will be seized be the anguish of learning...” 

I no longer felt shame about my tsundoku because to me they represented potential; new ways to learn, grow, inform my practice, enrich my perspective, and add tools to my toolbox. A library as a working tool. 

I started to ask some fellow kidlit folks about their tsundoku, and not surprisingly, many of them had them. Here's what's current:

Robin Rosenthal, also an author at Pen & Oink

Rodolfo Montalvo

Brian Ormiston

Corinna Luyken

Lisa Anchin

Dasha Tolstikova

Ashlyn Anstee

Sarah Jacoby, who added, “I'm trying to do a couple things with this pile of books by my bed. Two book recent covers have caught my attention: Klassen/Pennypacker's Pax and Peter Brown's The Wild Robot. Now I want to know all about what's going on with middle grade books. Other than the Wildwood Chronicles, I haven't paid much attention to the genre lately but now, given how gorgeous these books are, I'm very curious. So after I read Pax and The Wild Robot, I'm planning on re-reading Madeleine L'Engle's  A Wrinkle in Time series, A Gift of Magic by Lois Duncan, and The Brother's Lionheart  by Astrid Lindgren-all books that I recall being completely entranced by when I was of middle grade age…”

And Katie Kath wrote up her list:

• The Biblical Canon: It's Origins
• Transmission and Authority
• Moby Dick
• Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages
• The Once and Future King
• The Murder of William of Norwich

• Dr. Syn On The High Seas

Maybe in a way these tsundoku represent the ways we’re all exploring and growing. I was excited about pulling these lists together and talking about them with their owners. Often we chatted about each other’s lists (“that book is amazing” or “I always wanted to read that!”). 

What is your tsundoku?


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K-Fai Steele is a writer/illustrator based in San Francisco. She writes and draws with watercolor and ink about anthropomorphized animals who find themselves in sticky situations. 

Follow her on instagram or twitter.

Interview with new SCBWI Illustration Mentee, Rodolfo Montalvo - by Jen Betton

Rodolfo Montalvo was the recipient of the SCBWI Mentorship Award at the 2013 Summer Conference. Kidlit Artists would like to officially welcome Rodolfo to the blog, and ask him a few questions about the Mentorship experience and about what he is up to these days.

Kidlit Artists: Did the feedback you receive during the mentorship critiques either change or confirm the direction of your illustration? Are there any specific examples you can share?

Rodolfo: The feedback by the mentors did confirm a lot of the ideas I had about my work going into this year's conference. The portfolio I presented this year, much like the ones I presented the two years prior, was composed of a lot of pieces that explored slight variations of my "style." With some pieces I explored colors, with others I tried to limit my pen line, and one piece was just an old drawing that I pulled out to see if I could turn into a successful piece. While I'm always exploring with my work, creating the most cohesive portfolio possible is always my main goal. The mentors really help me figure out what was working and what wasn't. Every place where I was going in the right direction, the mentors really helped make the direction more clear, and every place I explored, whether I was successful or not, the mentors also helped in pointing the way.

Kidlit Artists: What kind of projects are you working on now?

Rodolfo: Currently, I am working on the sequel to "The Contagious Colors of Mumpley Middle School" and on a couple of picture book dummies. It has been really great getting to go back to the "Contagious Colors" world. We are currently working on the cover and should be completing the work pretty soon. But we still have all the interior illustrations to get to, which I'm really looking forward to. One of the dummies that I'm working on is based on the illustration with the boy with the paper airplanes, his name is Vincent, and I'm co-writing that project with my wife René. The other dummy is a new idea I've been playing with about a boy in a mountain. This project is very early in the development stage and right now I'm just having fun with the words and the drawings.

Kidlit Artists: Is there any type of illustration (or other work) that you're hoping for in the near future?

Rodolfo: I would love to get to write and illustrate my own graphic novel. Actually, the first project I tried writing was a graphic novel. When René and I were dating I asked her if she wanted to write the project with me. We worked on it for a while but I think it was probably too big of a project to start off on. So we eventually moved into picture books. That same graphic novel project is one that I really want to go back to and give it another go. There is a short list of stories for graphic novels that I really want to work my way through.

I still haven't done a picture book either, so I'm really hoping I get to do one sometime in the near future. 

Kidlit Artists: Is there one really helpful piece of advice that you've gotten since pursuing illustration? Any one piece of horrible advice?

Rodolfo: I don't know if it was a piece of advice that I might have heard or just something that just stuck with me, but patience and persistence have always been very important in my path to becoming an illustrator. Whatever small victories, or goals that I've met, they have never been accomplished over night.  Everything that I have as an illustrator is owed to countless hours working on my craft, staying focused on my goals, and going for it, over and over again. 

Kidlit Artists: Last, please tell us where we can find you online.

Rodolfo: You can contact me here:
info@rodolfomontalvo.com   
www.rodolfomontalvo.com
https://www.facebook.com/rodolfomontalvo.illustrationworks

Kidlit Artists: Thank you Rodolfo!