Monday, February 16, 2015

Top Ten Book-Related Problems I Have


I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

I feel like this topic has been covered pretty effectively by Buzzfeed, what with the 26 worst things that can happen to a book lover and 17 problems only book lovers will understand, plus the Reader Problems questions I answered not too long ago.

Rather than trying to come up with my own list entirely from scratch, I'm going to first pull the parts of these lists that most resonated with me and then fill in with my own.

1. Getting interrupted while reading
This was something Mike had to learn early on in our relationship, and he still tries to talk to me sometimes while I'm reading. It's one thing if you're like, "Hey, Jess, can I interrupt you for a second?" but if you just start talking to me as if I'm not doing anything particularly important at the moment (SEE: A BOOK) you are going to get evil eyes from me.

2. Not remembering who I lent books to
I try to use Delicious Library to track this, but I have to do it immediately or I will forgot who I lent a book to or possibly that I lent out a book at all. And Mike sometimes lends our books out without remembering either. We had this conversation this past weekend:

Me: What book did we lend to someone yesterday?

Mike: I don't know. I don't think we lent out any books.

Me: Yes. We totally did. Maybe to... [Person A]?

Mike: Nope. We didn't lend her any books. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think we lent any books out.

Me: No, we definitely did. ::pulls open Delicious Library and starts slowly looking through the entire list of books we own:: Oh, yeah, Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys! Remember?

Mike: Oh, that wasn't to [Person A]. That was [Person B].

Me: See?? I knew it!

3. Accidentally getting spoiled
About a third of the way through The Madness Underneath (book 2 in the Shades of London series) I went to the library website to put a hold on the newly released The Shadow Cabinet (book 3). In the course of waiting for the hold to take I read the blurb, which spoiled two major plot points from book 2. Ah! So annoying! This is why I try not to read book descriptions, even for the book I'm currently reading — they can give too much away.

4. Reading too fast and missing stuff
When I get really impatient to find out what's going to happen next (especially if I suspect there is Impending Doom), I will inadvertently start skimming or glance ahead to the next page, and inevitably I miss something and get confused and have to go back and carefully read the page again.

5. Being disappointed when someone doesn't like a book I recommended
I think this is self-explanatory. I try not to be all, "WASN'T IT AMAZING? DIDN'T YOU LOVE IT?" because I recognize everyone has different opinions on things, but c'mon... didn't you love it??

6. Finishing an amazing book and having no one to discuss it with
This is one reason I recommend books to other people, and also why I'm in so many book clubs. Some books are just begging to be discussed. If necessary I'll go read other people's Goodreads reviews of it just to share in the mutual excitement and love, but then I get angry when I see negative reviews of the book (see No. 5).

7. Not being able to join in discussions of the-book-of-the-moment
This is the flip side of No. 6. Because I get most of my books from the library, and I have a giant to-read list, and I'm in a lot of book clubs, my reading is rarely dictated by whatever the "hot" book of the moment is. This means that there's usually some book that everyone wants to talk about to which I can only say, "Yeah, that's on my to-read list! I'll get to it eventually..."

8. Trying to decide whether to bring up how many books I read
I was at book club one time last year and people were talking about their reading goals. Someone brought up how she reads about 60 books a year and everyone started acting like she was the most amazing person ever and asking how she does it and all this stuff. I felt like it was relevant to the conversation to bring up that I was on track to read twice that many books, but there wasn't any way to do it that didn't sound like, "Neener, neener, I read more than you!"

9. Finding a great series that takes a nosedive in quality
It's great when you read a fantastic book and then find out it's part of a series — more to read! More time with your favorite characters! It sucks when the rest of the books in the series are not nearly as good as the first one, or the series ends in a really stupid way (I'm looking at you, The Younger Gods). I hate this so much that I will usually seek out reviews of other books in a series before deciding whether to continue with it... unless there are such major cliffhangers that I'll keep reading just to find out what happens, even if it turns out to be stupid.

10. Having a ridiculously long to-read list
I go back and forth on whether this is actually a problem. At one point I tried to cap it at 200 books (approximately the amount I could read in two years), but I still wanted a way to remember which books to add once I had spaces open up again... so eventually it made sense to just add as many books as I wanted to the list. I've been pretty good about not adding any books this year unless I really, really want to read them, so I can feel like I'm at least starting to make a dent in the list. But I don't think I would ever want to clear out the list completely and have nothing I was particularly excited about reading next, right?

What are your biggest book-related problems?

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5 comments:

  1. Great list. My biggest book-related problem is definitely way more books than I could ever read. Of course, that doesn't stop me from buying more.

    http://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/2015/02/top-ten-tuesday-ten-book-related.html

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  2. I feel fortunate that I read fairly quickly; a podcast host I used to listen to once said that he added up all the books he wanted to read and he wasn't likely to get to them all in the rest of his life! Unless i have an unusually short lifespan, I should eventually get through all of my current to-read list... but of course, by that time, I'm sure I will have added many more!

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  3. Yeah, I end up confusing myself all the time — it's terrible if I'm skimming ahead to find out the answer to a plot question and I end up missing the part that gives the answer I was looking for in the first place!

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  4. Accidentally getting spoiled by blurbs is THE WORST. I HAAAAAAATE when they do that. I picked up a book at the library recently, and the blurb started with "After the death of [character]", which spoiled the previous book in the series before I even realised that the book I was holding was a sequel. SIGH.

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  5. Ugh, that sucks!!

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