Yes, Bookworm Problems Are Real

You have more books than what your shelves can hold. Or maybe your shelves hold less than what they really could. The only solution? Buy more books. But that would mean having to spend… again… on multiple books. Didn’t you just buy three new ones last week? Only to add more to your already overwhelming TBR stack? It just keeps piling up, doesn’t it? But you don’t care, you’re still going to buy more and more books. It’s a done deal. Sound familiar? That’s probably because you’re a bookworm, and sometimes being a bookworm has its own set of dilemmas. The good kind of dilemmas, though. And we’re all in it together.

You have a habit of bringing a book with you wherever you go… even if you’re attending a prom. It’s fine, no one’s judging you, especially not me—come on, I did that, too. When people ask you what your favorite book is, your mind suddenly goes blank. It’s not that you don’t have one, in fact, you have way too many that the question seems tricky.

You’re reading seven books at once, wondering if you’ll ever actually finish one of them. You have a morning book, a lunch book, a past-time book, a bus book, a train book, a bed-time book. When you’re not in the mood for your lunch book during lunch, you may switch to your bus book, and when you’re not in the mood for that either, maybe you’ll switch back. We’re all Rory Gilmore most of the time, I know.

I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.
Virginia Woolf

You’re reading in bed and you lose your bookmark under the sheets. Now you have to pause reading and find that damn bookmark instead. Maybe you have a current favorite book, and for some reason you develop a sense of possessiveness over it. So, when you hear other people say it’s their favorite book, too, you just want to scream: But it’s my favorite book! It’s mine! Also, accidentally spilling spaghetti sauce on your pages. In Hermione Granger’s words: What an idiot.

You stayed up all night finishing a really good book and then immediately regretting it the next day. You watch a movie only to know that it was based on a book, now you despise yourself (How can I not know about this?!) for not reading the book first. Or maybe you have this book you value so deeply you’re scared that it might one day be adapted to a film and they butcher it. Oh and when publishers kinda sorta destroy the experience for you and everyone else and reprints copies of the book with the movie cover.

You shop not for clothes, not for shoes, but for books. You’re downright obsessed with the scent of books. So, when you bury your nose between the pages and actually try to smell that book in public, people give you the look.

You just finished reading the best book you have ever read in your entire life and now you can’t get yourself to pick up a new book because you’re still emotionally invested in the other one. Now you fear your next one will never be as good as the one you just read. So you reread because there’s nothing else to do.

Honestly, I can go on and on with this list… but we both know that you and I have to go back to reading our own books instead of this post. Okay? Okay. See you on the next one!