My friend Jessica over at Quirky Bookworm is turning 31 today (happy birthday, Jess!).
In honor of her birthday, she’s hosting a #bookwormproblems linkup – so we book nerds can moan together (while being secretly delighted) about the problems that come from our book addictions.
- My biggest #bookwormproblem is in the first photo above: too many books, too little storage space. I have to stack and slot books on top of the shelved ones to fit everything in. (And that’s only one of my half-dozen bookshelves.)
- The second problem is in the second photo above: a massive, teetering set of To-Read stacks. What on earth do I read next? (The answer, in the case of this photo, was Early Decision, which was excellent.)
- I don’t cry in public very often, but when I do, it’s usually because I’m reading an affecting book on the subway and have to furtively wipe away tears.
- I’m a fast reader and I’m always reading more than one book at once – which means I’m constantly lugging several books in my shoulder bag, back and forth from work. (I commute on the subway.)
- Related: I have a serious horror of getting caught without something to read.
- Also related: I always pack far too many books when I go on vacation.
- Like Jessica, I’m a reviewer for Shelf Awareness, and I have a constantly shifting calendar of review deadlines in my head. This gets complicated if it overlaps with the next problem…
- Library deadlines! I have a horror of paying library fines, and I often check out new releases that can’t be renewed, so I get panicky if a book’s due date is approaching and I haven’t started it yet.
- I often get well-meaning book recs from people who don’t know me (or my tastes) well. Example: the friend of a friend I met a couple summers ago, who immediately turned to me and exclaimed, “Have you read Fifty Shades of Grey?” (Um, NO.)
- However, sometimes a friend convinces me to try a book I don’t think I’ll like, and I end up enjoying it – which means I have to eat my words. Most recently, my sister pushed a couple of Emily Giffin books on me: one was so-so, but I did enjoy the other one. And most famously, Valerie convinced me to try Harry Potter, and (bless her) she never even said “I told you so.”
- Related: I hate admitting to a friend that I didn’t like a book he or she recommended.
- Sometimes when I like a book, I start following the author on Twitter, only to discover that I like the real-life person much less than his or her characters.
- I have a huge collection of bookmarks, but I can rarely find one when I need it.
- If I buy one or two books in a series, I get a serious urge to collect them all. (Witness my growing Dorothy Sayers stack.)
- Related: I often can’t stop myself from buying a new release in a beloved series right when it comes out, usually in hardcover. (I can’t wait to buy the latest Flavia de Luce book in January.)
- I am a stickler for grammar, punctuation, etc., and repeated typos (especially common in advance copies of books) set my teeth on edge. (I also write and edit for a living.)
- Occasionally, I learn a word’s meaning from a book but I don’t know how to pronounce it – which is also Leigh’s bookworm problem.
- I get emotionally attached to fictional characters. I miss them after I finish their stories, and I get seriously annoyed when a film interpretation of a character doesn’t match my mental image.
- Related: I am critical of movie adaptations of my favorite books, most notably Little Women. (I read it so many times when I was young that when I finally saw the movie, the characters – especially Laurie – seemed all wrong and I couldn’t stop thinking about what they left out.)
This list grew longer than I thought it would! But I love being a bookworm, and I secretly love having most of these #bookwormproblems. (Except I really do wish I had more bookshelf space…)
It’s your turn – if you have #bookwormproblems, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
cakes, tea and dreams 
Oftentimes, I leave books that I own unread, while I read from the great stacks of the library books I constantly borrow! That being said, I never mind paying library fees because I assume the money is used to buy even more books for me to borrow!
I get awful book recommendations from time to time as well (and have had several people recommend Fifty Shades of Grey). Um, no.
At the moment, I listen to far more audiobooks than read actual books. I do have two books from the library at the moment that are on their second renewal (I’m almost done with one – I swear!). I’m less likely to stay up all night to finish a book lately, so I’m a bit slow. Also, I’m trying to lessen the amount of books I own, so I’m weeding out the ones I know I’ll never read again, and trying to only keep my absolute favorites (which still fill an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves).
Furthermore, I’m on a bit of a learning kick. I’m relearning Spanish (and hope to try French and German soon), I’m learning a programming language as well (Lua), and I’m learning to play my grandmother’s baritone ukulele. Along with knitting and all my Netflix shows, I’m afraid reading has gone a bit by the wayside lately (except for all the Sherlock Holmes stories I’ve been listening to at work to prepare for Series 3 – eeep!).
So, it’s more like I have #formerbookwormguiltproblems or #ohmygoshtheressomuchtodowhenyoufinishcollegeproblems instead.
Hi! I would also love to brush up on my spanish. Are there any tips that you could share?
I hate to break it to you, but your book worm problems will only grow as you age! Take it from a reader/book collector at the other end of the age spectrum, you just get more shelves and stacks of TBR. But oh what a journey!! I have found a solution to lugging all those books around, particularly when traveling. I’m listening to one book on Audible, reading one on my iPhone, another on my iPad, and yet another an actual book. Happy reading📚
This is such a great list. I also read more than one book at a time, and typically have even more added to the stack because of school. I hate when I have to put down a book I’m reading for fun so that I can read the one for school. This has caused me to have to stop in the middle of a few, never to be picked up again. Absolutely tragic. They’re all just waiting for me on my bedside table. Sigh. I love, though, when a book for school becomes one of my very favorites. I just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns as an independent read for my Engligh class, and oh my. Love.
I love YOU, my bookworm friend!
-Carlee
I have recently finished my degree and am getting back into reading for pleasure. I remember a time when I could read 2-4 books per week….oh, those were the good ‘ol days. As a child, I would be punished by being sent to my room where I would read or nap. My momma would knock and say, “You can come out of your room now.” My response was typically, “Five more minutes, please.” My momma soon caught on that it was more punishment to lock me out of the house, without my book, of course.
Toting too many books will add one additional problem to your list: back problems. You may want to consider lightening your load just a tad bit.
My daughter has acquired my love of books and told me just the other day that if we took away the bed frame of her queen size bed, the books underneath, which just won’t fit on the bookshelves, would be ample support. Love it!
Thanks for the birthday wishes! (And for linking up!) 🙂
I swear the Borrowers take all my bookmarks, so frustrating. Equally frustrating is when Shelf Awareness and library deadlines coincide. Enough to make a bookworm crazy! (And oh yes, the pain of grammatical errors in advance copies…)
Love this! Especially the “50 Shades” recommendation – haha! Reminds me of a #bookwormproblem I had on the day Emily was born. I was lying in recovery after my C-section, so obviously I was unable to move. I had nothing to do – nothing to read! – and from the other side of the curtain, I could hear the nurses talking about both “50 Shades of Grey” and “Twilight” – giving plot summaries, recommending the books to one another, and so forth. I wanted nothing more than to leap out of the bed and shout at them all, “There are SO MANY better choices!” but I’d had surgery 20 minutes before and was completely immobilized. I was mulling over just yelling something like “Jane Austen!” from my bed when, I think, I fell asleep. Ha. Still one of my most vivid memories from a day that is mostly a blur.
I don’t think it is possible to have enough bookshelf space.
This list is pretty much mine as well.
I relate to almost all of these! The towering To Read stack, the fear of library fines, always keeping a book with me (because you never know when you’ll have 5 minutes to spare!), and so on. (Thanks for linking to my post, too!)
Finding out that a good book you read is part of a series, which then pushes everything on your to read list back so you can read the series you just found 🙂
Yes, to almost all of these. Although in my case, it’s tearing up in the coffee shop. 😉 1, 2, 4 and 6 are the reason I finally gave up and switched to (mostly) ebooks. The exception is series I had that I know I’ll want to mainline on a weekend sometime (Dorothy Sayers included) and read through six or seven of them. All my writing books are ebooks now so I can have all of them with me when I’m out and about writing.
Being bookless is definitely one of my worst nightmares and it did actually happen to me recently – I still have nightmares! Luckily I started re-reading an old favourite and the world was a happy place again! 🙂