About
積ん読 — Tsundoku
Tsundoku (積ん読) is a beautiful Japanese word for the act of acquiring books and letting them pile up without reading them. It combines tsunde-oku (to pile things up) with doku (to read).
It's not hoarding. It's aspirational collecting. Every unread book is a promise to your future self — a future self who apparently has unlimited free time and zero interest in sleep.
This site is a monument to that optimism: 3,534 books cataloged, 72% read, and roughly 6.4 years of nonstop reading to finish the rest. But who's counting?
The Numbers
- Books cataloged
- 3,534
- Actually read
- 72%
- Still "planning to"
- 28%
- Total pages
- 1,129,957
- Shelf space needed
- 88.4m
- Hours to read all
- 18,833
Free Reading
Many books in this collection are in the public domain. We've linked to free reading and listening sources wherever available:
- 977 books linked to Project Gutenberg for free reading
- 705 books linked to LibriVox for free audiobooks
- 129 books linked to HathiTrust Digital Library
How It's Built
This is a fully static site — no server, no database, no JavaScript frameworks fighting for your CPU. Just HTML, CSS, and a few Svelte islands for search and filtering.
Stages of Tsundoku
- Denial — "I don't have a problem. I just appreciate good literature."
- Bargaining — "If I read two books a week, I'll finish by... 2029."
- Cataloging — "I should organize these into a database. With enrichment pipelines."
- Acceptance — "I built a website for my unread books. This is who I am now."
- Relapse — "Oh, that looks interesting..." *adds 50 more books*