Top Ten Tuesday (42)

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Bookish Confessions

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. It’s awesome. Every Tuesday, the lovely folks over at The Broke and the Bookish post a top ten list topic so that book lovers like you and me can pour over our shelves and make our own lists. You can check out all the other Top Ten Tuesday‘s on their site!

***

Bookish confessions. Don’t we all have some? I feel like I’m going to love this TTT because it will make me feel less alone in my weirdness, and that, friends, is always a plus.

I have a bookmarking system

So, I have one bookmark that is basically my “number 1 book I am reading right now” bookmark. Whatever book (and obviously this cannot apply to ebooks) it’s in, that’s the book I’m focusing my attention on. Then, I have a secondary bookmark, and then–in dire situations–a tertiary bookmark. Yes. I know. ANAL x infinity. But wait. It gets worse.

I MUST complete series

I don’t mean that I must always read a whole series once I start, although that would be nice, as long as I actually liked the first book. No, I mean that once I buy a book in a series, I have to buy them all. I cannot stand having books on my shelves in series that aren’t complete, so once that first purchase is made it’s a given that I’m going to be buying more books.

I am a compulsive rereader

If a year ever passes when I don’t reread any books, something is wrong with me. I’ve reread 6 books so far this year, and am always wanting to reread more.  I think about books I’ve read and loved all the time, and I’ve reread books this year for the third and fourth times. No lie, there are books that I reread EVERY. YEAR. I can’t even say that they are all generally mind-blowingly good. It’s just that they are to me.

I read ahead to the ends of books more often than I admit

So this, I know, is a big faux pas. Really? I do it pretty often. If I’m particularly worried or curious or just can’t read fast enough for my own satisfaction, I’ll give a little peek to the end. Just a little one, and just a part. I’ll never read the whole last chapter or anything. But yeah. My name is Amy, and I am a skipper.

I get incredibly disappointed when the Acknowledgments are short

Friends, I read the acknowledgments of every book ever. Always. If an author’s acknowledgments are only a paragraph long, I’m legit bummed.

My own personal shelving system consists of…CHAOS. NEVERENDING CHAOS

Psh. You’d think that as a librarian I’d have a little better control over my own collection. Alas. Instead I have unmitigated clutter and disaster. It’s really very bad. There’s a very good, true reason that this blog is called “Tripping Over Books.”

If a book I’m reading has poems or song lyrics written in it, I generally skim

Generally speaking, this applies to original stuff, not lyrics to actual songs or poems. Worst offender of this? The Lord of the Rings books. I don’t think I read one single song that Tolkein wrote in those books. Skipped right over them. Biggest exception? The Sky Is Everywhere. I read all the poems in that book over and over again.

The number of classics I’ve read is really and truly abysmal

I’ve never read any Dickens whatsoever. Same with F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’ve never read Moby Dick, The Grapes of Wrath, Catch-22, or Fahrenheit 451. I read The Catcher in the Rye but hated it. I can’t say that I have any real interest in reading On The Road. I’ve always meant to read Little Women and the Anne of Green Gables books, but I have a hard time getting into them because I’ve seen the movies already. I HAVE read and enjoyed some Hemingway, and I’ve read most of Shakespeare’s plays. The classics, guys. The bane of my reading life.

I sometimes get lost while reading action sequences

Does this only ever happen to me? I’ll be reading along, totally following what’s happening and then the ACTION starts and people are running and throwing punches and CHAOS CHAOS everywhere and all of a sudden, I’m finding the need to reread pages and am all, “Wait. How did that person get over here?” or “Oh my God I have no idea what just happened.” This is particularly bad during actual fight sequences. I can hardly picture them. It gets to be so bad sometimes that I wind up saying to myself, “Ok, so this person fought this person and this person won/lost. You have the gist. Moving on.”

I have a horrible retention rate when it comes to remembering things about books I have read in the past 

This is very bad, friends. It’s not that I don’t pay attention when I read; the opposite, in fact. When I’m reading, I’m FOCUSED, usually. But something about the number of books I read coupled with the absolute lack of a break between books causes me to retain very little in the way of any kind of detail. The only books this doesn’t happen with are books that I’ve reread more than once.

I’m always on the lookout for mentions of characters’ birthdays and look up their astrological signs

OMG, I totally do the “so, what’s your sign?” cheesiness while reading. This is a bad one, right? SO WEIRD! But, there it is. I do it. If I know that real time in a book is October, and someone mentions a character’s birthday being two months before, I’ll be like, “hmm, I wonder if they’re a Leo or a Virgo. They seem more like a Leo to me.” And I’ll try and PUZZLE IT OUT. I know. Also, bonus points to characters who share my astrological sign (Virgo). I ALWAYS notice that shizz. Unfortunately it gets me people like Bella Swan. You can’t win ’em all, guys.