What are you “bad habits” with a book?
With reading exploding these last few years, I’ve noticed many readers try their best to keep their books pristine.
I never have- I love the feeling of “loving a book”, if that makes sense.
– I crack the spine. (How do you read a book without cracking the spine?!)
– I take it everywhere with me- the bar, outside, etc. Which means wherever I can fit it while traveling to those places- the glove compartment, a small purse, etc. Of course this all results in some sort of wear (or even stains when I spill 😂)
– My dog jumps on me while reading, leaving paw prints I try to brush away 🙈
– Sometimes I lose book jackets in my travels 🤷🏻♀️
– and finally, if I’m desperate, I’ll dog eat a corner
Oh, and no so much, related to book structure, I will DNF if it doesn’t capture me. There’s too many good books out there to waste time on something I’m not in love with.
by ISeeNoSurprise
17 Comments
I treat all my paperbacks pretty harshly. They’re all dog-eared, water-logged and barely holding together.
My hardcovers are all babied though. Especially my coffee table books. I love my coffee table books.
I will start 4-5 novels and just lay them around my room face down, open to whatever page I lost interest.
Buying more books than I have time to read or space to store.
A friend of mine told me that they DNF anything if it doesn’t grab them by page 25, which seems like a very short time frame for me.
I bend spines over, only if it’s a particularly flimsy paperback. I’ve been getting freer about annotating. This started with Gardens of the Moon, the first Malazan book, because I wanted to capture my thoughts, theories, ideas, and general comprehension of a dense story.
You’re the monster.
Totally agree on DNFing, used to force myself to finish when younger but it just wastes time and causes misery. Far too many worthwhile books we’ll never have time to read.
I can’t actually read books right now due to long covid messing with my brain. My bad habit is that that hasn’t stopped me from buying books!!
I keep tell my myself that future me will be very happy with past me…
I don’t see an issue with anything you said. Books are meant to be read and by doing so you will contribute to their wear.
I highlight, underline and scribble in a lot of my books. It drives my wife crazy but I enjoy it!
I bought a whole series before I have even read the first. And I have been burnt a few times by doing it. Also, i am on a self-imposed book buying ban, so I will only buy a book if they are a newly released sequel
People who maul paperbacks are monsters.
I don’t consider any of these “bad habits,” though I don’t do most of them. If it’s a flimsy paperback, the spine will end up cracked, and I don’t actively try to avoid it. Otherwise I don’t do any of the things you listed above. At the end of the day though, it’s your book. Unless you’re mistreating my property, I don’t care what anyone does to their own books, and I think it’s pretty silly that others do.
I don’t think any of what you said are “bad habits”, just habits. I personally like to keep the spines of my paperbacks intact so I can conserve the books better (especially the low-quality eng paperbacks), but if they end up breaking well, then it happened.
I also DNF a book if I know I won’t enjoy it and it’s too long and/or too boring, if it’s short and/or engaging I might push through and give it a hate review, aka my favorites to write.
I’m a “mood reader” so I end up reading multiple books at the same time. But I know I will finish them all, eventually!
Overall I don’t think I have any “controversial” reading habits. I do like having a bookmark and if I don’t have one I will just memorize the page.
I hate big physical TBRs and I also unhaul (get rid off) books very easily. If I didn’t enjoy them, then bye-bye! Off my bookshelf they go… 👋
I used to give books 100 pages to grab me, but sometimes those 100 pages are a slog and it puts me off reading for weeks so I’ve reduced it to 50.
I force myself to finish books that I don’t even like and yeah I know that life is too short for reading books you don’t like but my brain doesn’t let me lol.
I’m re-reading *Something Wicked This Way Comes* because it’s close to Halloween. I got to the end of a chapter and went to dog-ear my page, and saw that there was already a crease. I smiled. At some point, years ago, I stopped at this same page. What was I doing at the time I had to pause? How old was I? How much have I learned since then? It was a poignant little reflection for me.
I mostly only read paperback or kindle, and I’ve never had any issue with dog-earing pages, partly due to the above. If a book is marked by several little creases, a coffee stain here or there, it just means it was well-enjoyed in my eyes and you can see your own memories in your experience.
On occasion I will also write and date a little blurb of my thoughts in the back of a book. Maybe I’ll read it again, maybe I won’t. But maybe my son will, or a friend, and get to see what I was thinking at the time. Maybe they’ll see my dog-ears all throughout the book and feel part of the journey with me. “Bad habits,” maybe, but maybe I’m just sentimental like that.
I solved all of these problems by reading e-books. Saves so much wear and tear, ha ha. However, my poor Kindle is in pretty bad shape from dropping it so many times. I’m surprised it’s still operational at this point.
I literally accidentally dropped my first Stormlight Archive book in the toilet as soon as I got it, then shrugged and went, “Well, now it feels more like something from the setting.”
I zone out while reading and then realise I haven’t a clue who “Harriet” is
I buy 2-4 books at a time, read one, then buy another 2-4