Book those meetings!

Working from home for many means plenty of video meetings.  "Zoom" has taken on a new meaning in our vocabulary.

Not everybody is comfortable with this new way of interacting.  Some are relaxed and easy, while many others are seemingly not.  A few make sure that the background is professional and presentable, and then there are others.

So, of course, there are ratings for that too.

For now, these are in a lighter vein, but I won't be surprised if the rating system becomes a part of everything else in life that we seem to be rating all the time.

A shelf with books is one of the favorite backgrounds--it tells the viewer that the person is a reader and is informed and, therefore, knows what they are talking about.  Is it any surprise that book publishers provide background images of their books?  Like this one from Random House:

Have that in your background and impress the heck out of the viewer!  Who cares if you have not read the books as long as you know how to talk about them ;)

Couldn't books be a part of the home decor as much as paintings and tchotchkes are?

Yes, they can, say the Japanese, who even have a word for it: Tsundoku.

And you thought only Germans have a word for everything!

Tsundoku means buying books that you do not read but pile up at home.

"The phrase 'tsundoku sensei' appears in text from 1879 according to the writer Mori Senzo," Prof Gerstle explained. "Which is likely to be satirical, about a teacher who has lots of books but doesn't read them."
While this might sound like tsundoku is being used as an insult, Prof Gerstle said the word does not carry any stigma in Japan.

You just happen to have a lot of unread literature.  That's all.  There are far worse things that one can do about which we need to worry a lot ;)

But what if some of the unread books have $20 bills tucked away in between the pages?  You will never know unless you read the books, right?