8 Struggles You Will Deeply Relate To If You’re A Huge Bookworm

Being physically unable to restrain yourself in bookshops

You’ve got a stack of books by your bed, not to mention a heap of things on your Kindle. You don’t actually need to enter a bookshop right now. But that three-for-two offer is so seductive, it would really be rude not to select a few new tomes to bring home with you. Bye-bye, money. Bye, shelf space. Oh, how we miss book shops.

And as a result, hiding from your to-read pile like a guilty dog

See, you were meant to read another book next, since it’s been sitting there for so long… but this one is NEW! Meanwhile, the teetering stack of books by your bed threatens to topple over and smother you in the night. Whoever said reading wasn’t a dangerous hobby?

Trying to read lying down

Reading while lying in bed or on a sun lounger seems like the perfect activity, but holding a book over your head? Impossible. Lying on your belly and propping yourself up on your elbows? Extremely comfortable. Reading on your side? Well, you’re going to have to turn over on to your other side to read the opposite page. Call the whole thing off, TBH.

Trying to read and eat

Eating lunch alone feels like the ideal time to sneak in a few pages of your book – that is, until you actually attempt to hold a book open with one hand while feeding yourself with the other. Get ready to lose your page AND get spag bol stains all over your precious reading material. Gross.

Trying to read while someone insists on talking to you

As a society, we have (mostly) accepted that someone with headphones on does not wish to be conversed with. Why can’t we apply the same thinking to someone reading a book? Please, do not force us to read the same sentence nine times over because we’ve forgotten where we are due to idle chatter.

But not being able to hear anything when you’re very much engrossed

How many times did your parents have to call you as a child to get you to snap out of your reading trance and do your chores? And how many times as an adult have you had to ask people to repeat key information that you missed because what was happening on page 394 was too juicy? Reading-induced selective hearing is real, people.

The panic when someone wants to borrow a book

Like, you could give it to them, and it would be fine, but what if they’re dog-ear people? What if they crack the spine? What if they mark their page by leaving the book plonked open, upside-down? WHAT IF THEY DON’T GIVE IT BACK? There’s simply too much to think about.

And putting things off until you reach a natural ‘breaking point’ in your book

You need to pee, but the chapter doesn’t end for three pages, so sorry to these kidneys. You said you’d wash the dishes at the next page break, but when you got there you just had to keep going, so the dishes remained unwashed. If your book has no chapters, you can just forget about ever getting anything done. That’s the life of a voracious reader. Oh well.

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• Bookworm