Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Problems

brokeandbookish.com

I missed last week's Top Ten Tuesday meme, but this week's is one that I am so on board with: bookish problems that I have. Anyone who reads a lot is bound to have problems relating to their literary obsession, and I am no exception. I have a feeling most of my problems are the same ones that others experience.

1. I visit too many secondhand bookstores.
     It's true. They are my crack. I almost never can leave without an armful of old books. In fact, I was super proud of myself when I stopped in at my favorite place to find a copy of Far From the Madding Crowd, and managed to purchase only that book.

2. Library due dates.
     My mindset for the last (roughly) ten years since I began visiting the library on my own has been that it's a really good donation when I have to pay late fees...

3. NO ROOM FOR MOAR BOOKS.
     Let's see...I had three tall bookshelves in my room when I lived with my parents, and books still stacked up everywhere. And they overflowed my college dorm room. And since getting married and moving in with my husband, we still only have those three tall shelves, plus a couple short ones and more books than we want to admit. It doesn't help that we gravitate towards different types of books, too.

4. Reading too many books at once.
     Attempting to be a multi-tasker and get too many things done at once flows over into my reading habits. At one point last year I think I was technically reading seven books. It was ridiculous and it happens to me a lot. I also attempt to read, watch a movie, and do housework at the same time, which is pretty much impossible but doesn't stop me from trying.

5. Remembering I even OWN a Kindle.
     This is a difficult one for me. I'm a physical book kind of person, but having a Kindle has perks. But I never have it charged up and I refuse to pay for digital books so it's full of free classics which have tons of typos, no page numbers, and are generally too long for me to recall details since I can't easily flip back to look at something. I've probably read five or six books on it since I got it a couple years ago. My husband likes it, though.

6. Making time to read before I'm too tired.
     Maybe this is called "getting older" or "being an adult" but at any rate, I have lots to do during the day and I also try to catch up on my tv shows during the day when I'm working on housework, so then I'm rather exhausted by the time I settle in for the night and it's hard to concentrate on a book. I used to read for hours in the evening.

7. Sometimes I spend more time picking my next book than I do actually reading.
     GoodReads is a fantastic way to waste time, especially if you want to make your to-read list another thousand miles long. I love reading personal book blogs, too, but there comes a point when you have to actually pick up your book and read it, you know?

8. Social obligations.
     I'm an introvert, but I also like to see my friends and family. But I've discovered that the times I most want to have my nose in a book is when I'm at a social function. Maybe that's social anxiety? As soon as I walk in the door of a gathering, whether friends or family, I wish I had a book. It's like my security blanket, and I used to do this when I was younger and it was fantastic.

9. Not reading books I already own.
     At least half of the books on my shelves are books I've purchased in the last eight years or so, and I have not read most of them, which is hard to even admit. I even made a pact with myself this year to not go to the library unless I need a book for my Reading England challenge.

10. So many books, so little time.
     While there are a few genres that I avoid, I want to read everything else. It's a problem that all voracious readers have, and one that will never go away. My thirst for knowledge is such that it shall never be fully quenched. And that's a problem I really don't mind having. :)

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There you have it, ten bookish problems. Do you have any of these problems? Or others that I have not mentioned?

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Currently Reading: Far From the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy.

bookish thoughts

Keeping up with more than one blog is not easy. I sort of wish I had kept to one and just made multiple sections, etc. Perhaps that will happen in the future, though it's not likely. I have to organize and categorize things. It's the librarian in me.

Seriously, all the books in my house are (loosely) catalogued in Dewey Decimal. I spent about a month last autumn doing that, much to my husband's dismay. Half the books are his, though, so he shouldn't complain. And now it's super easy for me to find a book! (Doesn't mean we have enough bookshelves, of course....) I did have my own system beforehand, but Dewey makes everything simpler. It's too bad Dewey can't really be used with kitchen cabinets.

I'm almost halfway through the Artemis Fowl series, which is excellent. I have the third book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, but I kind of want to finish Artemis Fowl first. But this snow is making me want to curl up with a big ol' classic tome. Like War and Peace or something Russian. The problem with that is the books already mentioned are library books. Oy vey.

I haven't read a classic in a couple of months, and it's starting to wear on me. Classics are my comfort novels, kind of like PG Tips with a jigger of whiskey is my comfort drink, and any version of Alice in Wonderland is my comfort film. (Or old black and white films. LOVE.)

Do you have a comfort novel?

Anyway. It's tempting to put down Artemis Fowl and pick up War and Peace. It really is. But I did make a promise to my youngest sister that I would finish Eoin Colfer's series. I don't really know what the point of this post is. Just a reader's ramblings, I suppose.

Also, do you like my new background?