Do your books ‘spark joy’? If not, donate them to the UAE bookstores

Do your books ‘spark joy’? If not, donate them to the UAE bookstores

coronavirus, covid-19, school books, distribution of books, dubai schools, ministry of education

Published: Thu 11 Jan 2024, 5:52 PM

The Japanese have a term called tsundoku, which refers to the phenomenon of acquiring books and letting them pile up in one's home without reading them.

For many years, I used to feel very guilty about buying new books when I already had unread books on my shelf. As a self-proclaimed minimalist, I’m not someone who hoards. I think long and hard before buying new things, hate excess and wastefulness, and love decluttering. So I found it very hard to accept my compulsion to buy new books while there were still piles of unread ones. However, the fallacy of my rationale was that I equated an unread book with an unused object such as a piece of clothing when that is not the case. My books served very different purposes in my life that I wasn’t taking into account.

First, over the years I have discovered the joy of creating and building a home library. My bookshelves are the centre of my home and my books are my most prized possessions. I put thought and effort into getting books I want to read, even if