Tsundoku (As Categorized by Italo Calvino)

It's an art, I think. Tsundoku, that is. It's the Japanese term for acquiring a large collection of books but not actually reading them. (Leave it to Japanese to have a word for everything. Just another way in which English is sorely lacking.)

I've gone through phases in my life when I've been good about this. And I've gone through phases when I've been bad about this. Of course, the real question is, which phase is which?

Italo Calvino explored this idea incredibly well in the first chapter of his book If on a winter's night a traveler (which you - yes you - should absolutely read if you haven't).

I'll let him take it from here:

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Before You Even Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you came up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out: 

the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages,
the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment,
the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case,
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified. 

Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an army that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.  

With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Authors Or Subjects Appeal To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and the for the not new you seek in the new).

(No doubt you can see now why Italo Calvino stands in the highest echelon of authors, in my estimation.)

So let's be real, friends: Which of these categories of books do you still fall for? 

I think I have literally fallen for every single category in this list at least once, though I'm particularly weak against the attacks of Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified and Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.