Tripping Over Books

Top Ten Book-Related Problems

We all have plenty of these, right? I could also probably come up with more, but these are all pretty prominent ones for me. You’ll notice that many of them are connected and furthermore, related to the purchasing of books. Not a coincidence.

BUYING TOO MANY BOOKS | This is a constant problem for my wallet. I buy books regularly. I preorder books in large chunks several times a year. I’m forever getting boxes from Amazon and Book Depository and Book Outlet. It’s a real problem. I spend more money on books than any other thing except maybe clothes for work, but I’ll tell you: it’s close. I try to curb myself. I cannot.

STARTING SERIES | I do this a lot. I start a series but then never get around to finishing it. I’ve still not finished Cynthia Hand’s Unearthly series. I haven’t finished Mistborn or Monstrumologist or Shatter Me. I still have to read the new books in Sherry Thomas’s Elemental Trilogy and Rick Yancey’s 5th Wave. I’m behind on A.C. Gaughen’s Scarlet series and Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation series. I could go on. What does this mean? Do I have a commitment problem? I don’t think so since I’m all caught up lots of others, but man. This is a frustrating one.

LACK OF SHELF SPACE | See #1. I don’t have room for all the books I buy. I have shelves that are full–only two, but they’re packed. I have containers under my bed–full. Some like storage boxes scattered around–full and growing piles. ACTUAL PILES. It’s horrific and amazing at the same time.

READING INSTEAD OF INTERACTING WITH HUMANS | There are very few people that I would rather hang with than read a book. Reading is so important to me and I want to do it all the time. I bring more than one book with me everywhere I go, even to work when I can’t read at all. So when I do get some free time, I usually want to be reading instead of shooting the shit with people. I mean, I still do things with real people in person. But even if I’m enjoying myself, which I do, I’m thinking about getting home and picking up my book.

FORGETTING DETAILS | This kind of ties into #2. I have a hard time picking up books in a series because my memory is kind of crap. I’ll remember big things, but I’m talking VERY big picture. I might completely forget minor characters or the group the bad guy works for or that one thing that happened that is going to turn into this other thing but it won’t make sense if you can’t remember the first thing. It’s bad. Also, details run together on me. This ESPECIALLY happens with series books. I’ll remember a thing happening, but can’t for the life of me remember which book it happened in. Thank God for wikis.

READING TOO MANY BOOKS AT ONCE | I usually have a handle on this one, but sometimes it gets out of hand to the point where I’ve got so many books going at once that I can’t decide which one to pick up and I kind of break down and need to text my girls furiously for help. I used to NEVER read more than one book at a time; now it’s my regular thing, and sometimes it gets the best of me.

STICKING TO MY COMFORT ZONE | I don’t have a problem always reading things that I’m comfortable with because I don’t really see it as a “comfort zone.” I see it more as I like to read things that I enjoy. But this likely often keeps me from finding NEW things that I’d enjoy, and that bums me out. It always comes down to reading something new that I’m unfamiliar with or picking up a book by a favorite author or a well-loved genre. I’ll pick the familiar every time.

LACK OF CLASSICS | I wasn’t an English major in college, but I’ve always loved reading. However. My knowledge of classics is ABYSMAL. Like, awful. I’ve never read any Dickens. Never read THE GREAT GATSBY. I’ve read Jane Austen, but no Charlotte or Emily Bronte. It’s really, frankly, terrible. I like the IDEA of classics and I’d be open to reading more of them, but I’d have to summon up some epic motivation.

DISORGANIZATION | I’m a librarian by training although not employment, but you’d think I’d have more of an urge to organize my home library. False. Maybe it’s because I don’t have shelves for everything. In fact, I’d venture that it’s exactly that. But the shelves I DO have aren’t alphabetized or organized by genre or color or anything. I loosely organize them by how much I liked them and then by author, but I don’t have shelf space for any more books anywhere, so new books by those authors get thrown into a pile somewhere. (Ahem. Like, lovingly placed I mean. I don’t throw my books.) I have a general idea of where certain books are, but I’d really love more storage space for them so I could do a full, hardcore LIBRARY SHELVING.

BUYING BOOKS AND THEN NOT READING THEM | Remember when I said that buying books is probably my greatest pleasure and most devastating vice? Have I not said that yet? It’s true. You know what makes it worse? I buy all these books and then maybe read, I don’t know, a smallish percentage of them. Every time I write a post about bookish resolutions or something like that, I always mention that I want to read more of the books I buy. I’m making more of an effort to do this every day.

What are some of your bookish problems?