Trends and Neologisms on Books

From “Bibliosmia” to “Book Hanghover”

Here is the glossary that the frequenters of the literary communities must know. Do you know what “tsundoku” means? And do you remember your last “page-à-vu”?

In Japanese, there is a way to define a person who buys books upon books he will never read. The term is tsundoku, a word that has no equivalent, perhaps because buying books is unfortunately not the most widespread among our habits. Babbel, the language learning app founded in 2007, asked its team of experts around the world to report neologisms and trends related to the world of reading: the result is a glossary of literary communities that frequent social media that is a photograph of the jargon most in vogue today.

In English there is the “book addict” and is called bookaholic but the word indicates those who immediately immerse themselves in reading and do not foresee the hypothesis of indefinite procrastination. On the other hand, those who have large libraries are used to the question “did you read them all?”. In the film A special day, Sofia Loren, in the role of the naive Antonietta, asks Mastroianni. Umberto Eco suggested answering the embarrassing question in various ways: one possibility was to chill the interlocutor by saying “I haven’t read any, otherwise why would I keep them here?“.

Scrolling through the glossary you will discover many curious words. A neologism with a nostalgic flavor also appears: “bibliosmia” indicates the pleasant sensation given by the scent of a book. In Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami describes in a few lines the olfactory falling in love with reading: “I read and reread the same book many times, and sometimes I closed my eyes and filled my lungs with its scent. Just smelling that book, running my fingers between the pages, for me it was happiness “. The bibliosmia is tied for obvious reasons to paper books, at least until they are fragrant invented the tablet that stimulate somehow even smell. Utopia? Who knows. In the novel The New World Aldous Huxley had imagined multi-sensory cinemas and it is not certain that it cannot happen for books.

Here are the other words that true readers need to know:

Book Therapy

It means using books as a therapy to solve our problems. The bibliotherapy or libroterapia is already a bit ‘of years a reality, even adopted by some psychotherapists. Many books have come out on the benefits that books can bring to readers, fewer on evil ones, but it is understandable. Years ago Sellerio published a medical handbook of literary remedies where love sickness could be relieved with Emile Brönte and depression with El Doctorow. The book was written by Ella Berthoud, painter and art teacher, and Susan Elderkin, bibliotherapist at the School of Life founded in London by Alain de Botton (the version for children was entitled Growing up with books).

Page-à-Vu

Along the lines of déjà-vu, it is when we feel like we have already read a book and we feel something familiar. Also on this it is worth mentioning Umberto Eco: “The important thing is to have them, the books: by dint of moving them, touching them, dusting them, a sort of osmosis is created, and after a few years you realize you already know what it is written there, even if you have never read them”.

Binge-Reading:

That is reading many chapters or a whole book in a row, without interruptions, because they are too involved in reading. The term clearly refers to binge watching, used for the binge of series and TV programs. The binge watch gained popularity when Netflix expanded its online production, becoming word of the year for Oxford University Press’s Oxford Dictionaries website.

Book Hangover

A feeling of emptiness that you feel after having finished reading a very engaging book. The “hangover” can cause avid readers not to feel ready to start a new book.

Then there are the words of love in the time of the web, such as “shipping” which is popular on social networks and is a derivative of the English word relationship. The shipping is the involvement of the player-fan in the relationship of a pair of fictional characters, a cheer because the protagonists of a literary saga or a tv series end up together.