To-be-read book anxiety is a thing. Here's how to deal with it

How has reading become all about checking books off a list? Or that your New Year's resolution is to get through 52 books in a year? Or making sure that your book shelves are worthy, woke and up-to-date? What do we do about all this book anxiety? Why have we done this to ourselves?

Some people buy more books than they can possibly ever read and there's actually a word for this in Japanese. It's called tsundoku.

According to the definition on Wikipedia it is "the phrase for acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them".

The word originated in the late 1800s in Japan as slang - so this problem has been around for a long time.

Yet, it does seem that it has gotten worse. The good news is that more books are being published and are more easily accessible than ever before. The bad news is that we are now really spoilt for choice.

How do we deal with the mountain ranges of books in our bedrooms, lounges, kitchens, bathrooms (!), all needing our attention? And there are those that are not physical - like wishlists on Goodreads, Audible, Amazon, and all those e-books you downloaded with good intentions of reading while on holiday.

Well, you can always turn to a book for help. No kidding. There are millions of good, informative books about anxiety - Goodreads have a solid 51 that they recommend as the best books for panic attacks and anxiety.

In terms of TBR (to-be-read) book anxiety, people have recommended that you divide your book piles into meaningful ones. This will apparently help you see whether you will read that book or not. There are a few categories to start off with, such as bought-it-on-sale-but-don't-know-if-it's-good; yah-someone-gave-me-this-book; this-is-a-must-read; this-is-the-next-Gone-Girl-book; I-want-to-reread-this; and the one hidden under the bed with the dustbunnies: this-is-the-classic-I've-always-said-I would-read-one-day.

Then what to do once it's all sorted? If you need a hobby besides reading, book art could be it: turning books into hedgehogs, book hearts, bird cages or even wedding dresses (there are many instructional videos on YouTube and many examples on Pinterest). But if tearing pages out of a book or gluing pages together gives you the heebie-jeebies, you can give the books away. Give them to a friend. Find them a good home.

But maybe the best thing is to take a deep breath, try not to stream anything to binge watch and just read, read and read some more. Read as many and buy as many as you can.

There's really no such thing as too many books.

WHAT BOOKS HAVE YOU LIED ABOUT READING?

We asked our team to share their fake reads so we can send them to books court for perjury!

EAT, PRAY, LOVE

I tried to read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, because I am not a book snob - also because every time I admitted to not having read it, people would insist that I absolutely MUST read it. So I tried.

But there must have been some sort of bug going round, because every time I opened the book I was afflicted by fits of convulsive nausea.

These attacks mysteriously stopped when I closed the book - or my eyes. So I stopped. I lied about having read it to stop those people who kept telling me, when I admitted to not having read it, that I absolutely MUST read it. - Sue de Groot, Insight deputy editor

ATLAS SHRUGGED

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I wanted another tick on some 100 books you must read list. I fake read it in varsity as it really didn't interest me at all and it still doesn't - Jennifer Platt, Books editor

ULYSSES

Somewhere between my first English tutorial at Wits and becoming a journalist, I got it into my head that we had studied James Joyce's Ulysses in class. Of course we hadn't - there isn't an academic in the known world who would try to teach Ulysses to feral undergraduates, not least because it's likely few professors have made it to the end.

Ulysses is unreadable. Those who have read it are regarded with awe, as if they have won a medal for bravery under fire. Still, when people ask me if I've read Ulysses, I say yes. I just don't say that the Ulysses I read was an Alistair MacLean airport thriller about warships. It was excellent too. - Paul Ash, Travel editor

THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH

Every James Baldwin book and Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. I lie to keep up with the Woke Folk. Because are you really woke if you've never read Baldwin or Fanon?

I haven't seen Baldwin's documentary I Am Not Your Negro either (and I lie about that too). Woke card revoked. I have rated books on Goodreads that I haven't finished. Shameless. - Pearl Boshomane Tsotetsi, Lifestyle editor

THE BIBLE

The Bible by God, angels, Moses, St Paul? I'd heard all the stories in nursery school and by the time I was old enough to read it for myself I was also old enough to read Richard Dawkins, who wrote: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

I'll read the Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff instead - Andrea Nagel, Lifestyle features editor

LES MISERABLES

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. To say that I've outright "lied" about reading this delicious avalanche of prose is misleading. I have read it, just not all of it, or even half of it for that matter.

The problem is my attention span is not built to process nearly 1,500 pages of well written but overwrought prose. That doesn't stop me from claiming to have pored over every honeyed word.

It is a shame to admit but smugly announcing that you read Hugo makes my inner hipster purr with self satisfaction. - Yolisa Mkele, features writer