The malady of piling up books

My wife, on the other hand, seems to have an irrational fear of completing them, writes Kishore Singh

My wife tells me there’s a word in Japanese for people who keep piling up books they intend to read but don’t — tsundoku. In my wife’s case, the malady is worse, since she piles up unread books alongside the half-read or partially read. Which means she begins to read what she had at least read a bit of, gets bored because it’s familiar, and leaves it all over again. She has re-read the first chapters of scores of books without completing them. I don’t know how many books she has read completely but there can’t be many of them.