Top Ten Tuesdays is an original and weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
Top Ten Book Related Problems I Have
Oh this is an easy one, but only because these are common bookish problems anyway and everyone can relate. I think.
1. So many books, so little time. There is never enough time in the entire world to read all the books I want to read. I've done my math. I have 500+ books on my reading list right now. It takes approximately 6 - 8 hours for me to read a 300 - 400 page book, assuming I don't need to get up for anything and I can read in one whole sitting--and this is a very rounded guesstimate. Using this as a standard average of all my books (since some are less than 200 pages, some are over 700 pages, etc...) that is a LOT of hours I would need to finish up my entire reading list.
And this is before I continue to add more titles to the infamous TBR.
2. So many books, so little space. One of the reasons why I have two different e-book libraries (Nook and Kindle) is for the ease of use, convenience, and how little space one book's file takes up in the digital world. And yet I still don't have as many e-books as I do paperback books. My book corner is quite a mess at the moment, and no matter how many times I rearrange my bookshelf, at least twenty books end up stacked up high on top of the shelf, and twenty books end up laying around the shelf on the floor.
There are so many books I'd love to own, just for the sake of owning, but I find myself rearranging my bookshelf in my mind several times trying to figure out where I'll put any new books I purchase.
3. I'm not the fastest reader in the world. At least not as fast as I would like to be. Yes, it takes approximately 8 hours for me to finish a book that averages 300 to 400 pages of material. Since I have to factor in work and sleep and other priorities in Real Life, giving myself an average of 2 hours-ish to read on a daily basis, I can typically finish an average length book within four days (two when I lose all respect for sleep and tomorrow, which tends to happen a lot). If I had one superpower in the world I would love to have, I'd love to be able to read faster so that I can get to the next reading adventure on my list. Of course, this could also be a disadvantage...
On that note... if maybe I could just read every book I want to read at the same time?
4. Books and stories don't last forever. Sometimes you find a fictional world or a set of fictional characters created just perfectly. And then the book comes to an end and you just wish you hadn't finished everything so quickly (a contradiction to wanting to be able to read faster, #3 above). You want to be able to continue living and experiencing that world, getting to know those characters, following along that story line... and then a wide gaping hole is left in your heart when everything is over.
Which is also one of the reasons why I love never-ending series (in spite of all the many reasons I don't like them so much).
Wow. I'm just a work of contradicting wants, aren't i?
5. "It's not like you have anything to do right now. You're just reading."
One word: Ugh!
6. I sometimes think I have a sign on my forehead that says, "Please bother me with two thousand questions as I am in the middle of the most exciting part of my book and would very much NOT like to get to the climax." I'm sure this says it all. I have people who want to ask the most trivial questions when they can see that I am reading and that I have that perfected aura of "Do NOT Disturb" radiating about me. The best way for you to get people to pay attention to you and try to make small talk is to walk into a room and start reading a book.
7. I can't read while _________. There are so many priorities in life that require your full attention whilst trying to accomplish. And since reading isn't a passive activity and also requires your full attention, I often find it hard to multitask reading and whatever it is I need to do. Sometimes I can make it work, but sometimes it's a little more difficult.
Fill in the blank with whatever fits for you: driving; walking; cooking; showering; cleaning; writing blog posts; having dinner with people; working; socializing; working out; etc...
Thank goodness for audio books on some fronts. I've recently started listening to audio books while doing certain chores, driving, and working out at the gym.
8. I don't want to read this book, but I want to finish it anyway. There are books you like and then there are books you don't like. And there are books you don't like that you make yourself finish anyway because of some obsessive need to say that you finished the book. I have my own issues with the concept of finishing or dropping books and one thing I've found is that I don't really like dropping books. I have done so before, but lots of times I merely tell myself that I am "putting the book on hold" for the time being until I can get back to it. In the end, I'm sure it's safe to say that I have dropped the book if I haven't gotten back to it within a certain period of time.
But I feel better in telling myself that I am merely putting a book on hold instead of outright dropping it. I don't know why I do that.
9. "Have you read [insert extremely classic or popular or famously celebrated book title here]? Why not? I thought you liked to read a lot?" It is ill-advised to automatically assume that just because I read a lot that I have read every popular, well-known book in the world. I am not easily hooked by popularity and don't always read whatever is trending or whatever is the best-selling book. I'm also not a specifically pretentious person in that I purposely avoid popular books that the media and the general public have decided are the "Best Book(s) Ever Written."
I simply read what I like to read and it can either be a currently trending book type such as dystopians, a book recently made into a movie, such as The Book Thief, or just some little old book that no one's ever heard of, or even books that are only widely popular in the book community because it hasn't been made into a movie yet. Or it's just some book I found and it sounded interesting and a lot of people either like it, hate it, or don't even know about it.
One thing is for sure though: Paranormal Romances and I have been teetering on the edge of not quite getting along. If the book is any sort of Paranormal Romance that happens to be extremely popular, chances are higher that I haven't read it and probably don't intend to do so, no matter how popular it has gotten.
Case in point:
No. I have not read Twilight or The Mortal Instruments series; nor have I read any John Green.
Yes, I have read The Hunger Games and Harry Potter and Divergent and The Hobbit.
No, I do not plan on reading Vampire Academy, The Vampire Diaries, Bloodlines, House of Night, Anita Blake, or any other currently trending vampire series (in fact, just strike all the vampire books from my list, because it's not a genre I've ever really been interested in anyway). And so, no, I do not feel like continuing Sookie Stackhouse (I have read the first book and found it wasn't my cuppa).
Yes, I have plans to read some Gillian Flynn books, James Dashner's Maze Runner Trilogy, and other books being made into movies. I'm also considering finishing The Giver quartet of books as well.
So I have not read all the popular books out there. There just happen to be other books that are more interesting to me at moments.
10. I can never read a favorite book for the first time again. The love of a world and characters created is always going to linger in the back of your mind. But unless you completely wipe your memory of a certain book and everything you know you love about certain books and series, you'll never be able to experience falling in love with a favorite book for the first time again. You can re-experience why you loved said book over and over again by rereading that book, but the feelings just aren't the same.
If you're lucky, you find new things to love about your favorite books. If you're not lucky, you realize there are reasons why you don't reread books if you can help it.
And now here's a bonus:
11. A good old-fashioned Reading Slump. This happens not because you don't have any books to read; this often times happens to me because there are so many books I want to read that I don't know which one I'd like to choose at that particular moment. You pick up book after book after book, you start reading a chapter or two, but the book just doesn't seem to catch your interest no matter how badly you'd been wanting to read that book previously.
I still want to read those books, but I'm just not in the mood for THAT particular book right now.
Making lists and creating Random Book Draw jars and taking recommendations sometimes helps. But in the long run, I'm a mood reader and find that sometimes I just can't find that one book that I really want to read at that exact moment in time.
Maybe I just finished a seven book series of a Cindy Gerard Romantic Suspense and I'm looking to pick up something similar but I just can't seem to find the right type of similar Romantic Suspense, because I've so thoroughly fallen in love with the world she created that I just want to read more books from the same series with the same types of characters written in the same style. Maybe I just read Rae Carson's Fire and Thorns trilogy and had gushing love for the story and the characters, but can't seem to figure what YA high fantasy to tackle next, because, what if it doesn't have the same elements I happen to deem as perfection?
Maybe I'm in the mood for a fast, page-turning crime thriller... but there are so many to choose from that I'm not quite sure which one I want to choose at that time. And maybe I'm in the mood for some random YA trilogy (for whatever reason, I'm not sure I'll ever understand), but there are at least five or six of them, completed and ready for devouring, but I just don't know which one I want to start with!
And another bonus after seeing someone else's Top Ten and realizing, "Hey, I have that problem, too!"
12. I have to read all series in the order of which they are supposed to be read. Well, to be honest, I prefer to read books in a series by order of publication date. I may read certain series in chronological order of the fictional world's time frame if the author says that this is how you should read the series, but I feel like order of publication will always be the closest to how you should read a series.
An author started writing this book first, then jumps to writing a prequel? No, I won't read the prequel first because, maybe that would actually ruin the flow of the series' story line. I don't know. I'm weird like that.
Then again, if I have no idea about the publication order or whatnot and the series is one of those where all the books can stand alone, I will start from Book 1 and work my way forward. It doesn't matter to me if I would enjoy Book 4 or Book 5 more because the first three books are kind of boring. I will read everything in order because I have my issues.
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Bookish first world problems. Go figure, huh?
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