Books Unbound’s Glossary of Terms

Acorn Books/Squirrel Books: The term given to the phenomenon of purchasing or collecting books without the goal of reading them with any immediacy. Much like a squirrel who stores acorns away for future eating, you are gathering books for future reading. You have no impending plans to read these books. [Originally explained in episode x at x.]

Drive By Diner Books: Inspired by a diner Ariel used to drive by often but never actually went into, this is a book that you continually encounter in bookshops and libraries, you may even pick it up often and get excited by it, but for some reason you always end up walking past it and you soon forget all about it… that is, until you drive by it once again and remember “oh yeah! I keep meaning to get that!” [Originally explained in episode x at x.]

Charcuterie Board Reading: This is a style of reading characterized by heavy sampling. Similar to the style of eating made possible by a charcuterie board where you sample a little cheese, sample a little pickle, try a bite of this meat, try a taste of that cracker, okay back to the cheese, etc, this style of reading means you pick up and put down books often. This is different from “dnf-ing” a book where you are making a conscious decision to put the book down permanently, here you are putting books down in nonchalant way, assuming you’ll be picking it up again soon. [Originally explained in episode x at x.]

The Kat Dennings Effect: Named after the gorgeous and talented actress Kat Dennings, this is the experience had by a reader where she recommends a book she has not read (either directly or indirectly, perhaps through a hunch based on second hand accounts or through an enthusiastic hauling of a book) and then someone reads the book (for example, Kat Dennings) followed by the reader finally reading the book herself and realizing she would not have actually recommended the book had she actually read it. This leads to feelings of regret that you blew your chance to recommend a true favourite to someone really cool. [Originally explained in episode 242 at 00:52:06.]

Mashed Potato Books: This is the most important term in the Books Unbound lexicon. Coined in the second episode of the podcast, this term defines the phenomenon of avoiding books because you are waiting for the “perfect” time to read them. Using a thanksgiving dinner as a metaphor, the idea is that you may have the propensity to wait until the very end of your meal to indulge in your favourite element, the mashed potatoes, thus allowing you to enjoy them more fully by having them as the great crescendo of the feast. However, by waiting too long and ignoring them, what can actually happen is that they grow cold and by the time you do eat them (ie read the book) they no longer hold the excitement you once hoped for. Alternatively, they may end up still being as delicious as you’d hoped but you become plagued by the feeling that you wish you hadn’t waited so long and accrued so much anxiety around the whole affair: you should have just gotten to the good stuff. [Originally explained in episode x at x.]

Turnip Book: Created by ShelfWornDrawn, this is a book that is “unappealing, but good for you.” Usually a classic, this is a book you feel that you should read but for which you can’t really muster any enthusiasm.