It's a bit of a read, but please bear with me.
I love to read, always have and usually end up at 100ish a year, not counting the fanfiction, because how do you count reading 200,000 words of life-changing text, but my point is I can’t imagine not reading, and I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than a week without picking up something. I’ve always been that friend who’s reading constantly and has a never-ending list of recommendations.
And I’m usually a lurker on here, but today at lunch, I was telling friends about how I read all of Becky Chambers in a week, and how I’ve been obsessed with Dungeon Crawler Carl, and why I just re-read Shelly Laurenston’s badger series this weekend and why I cried a little on the train today morning when I read the Wild Robot and to their credit, they were interested, but they didn’t quite get what I meant so I impulse wrote this post.
And it's not that I don't have lovely friends, we have other things in common, and some of them love books too, and I happily read whatever they’re reading just to talk about it with them. But they never seem to get around to my recs. I end up feeling like a weird little book circus when the conversation turns to books, always explaining new obsessions instead of having someone to scream about them with.
I read a lot, and I know that’s not everyone’s speed, but it's a craving for people who live in that same headspace of always being mid-book(s) and needing someone to get it. Just, you know, get that.
And before you say it, yes, I've tried the book clubs, but they usually read one book a month, and most of the time they're not even done with that one. The closest I've gotten to something that hit the spot is the Seasonal Reading Challenge on Goodreads, which is amazing because the prompts are more than I can read each season, and for some reason, that makes me so happy! But it's still a solo activity 🙁
And I’ll read anything. ANYTHING. (Anything fiction, I mean, and cool non-fiction like Vagina Obscura, for example.) If it has 25 books in the series, I'm in. Comfort sci-fi, literary fiction, tearjerkers, historical romance, trashy romance, shifter romance, space operas, hard sci-fi, thrillers, aliens — if the premise hooks me, I’m in. And I’m always happy to try new genres.
Sooo how do you deal with being like the weird book friend? Do you just tone it down and talk to yourself in the middle of the night? Have you found other people like you? Like, not in a sad way — just in a where are my people kind of way.
by dizzy-and-sugared
5 Comments
I had been thay friend. With the book Story of O.
For me, reading is as natural as breathing. I’m the only person in my friend group who’s a voracious reader. None of them read books as regularly as I do. We have interests in common but reading is not one of them. In my friend circle, I’m known as “the guy who’s read everything” and it is true. I get way more excited about certain adaptations of movies based on my favourite books than them. There’s no workaround to it. I’ve never had a friend circle where I’ve had someone who read as much as me and I’ve grown to accept that fact. I’m quite content with this aspect of my life being in solitude at this point too.
What’s weird about reading books?
I work in a library, so the vast majority of my book friends are also my colleagues and library users. Get yourself to a library! I love talking about books with library users when it’s quiet, helps pass the time, helps our ‘customer engagement’ metric, and gives me lots more book recs that I can either read myself or keep in mind to pass on to other library users!
(If you get chatting with a library worker, do be aware that we will politely wrap up the conversation when other library users need our help. Nothing to do with you, and nearly all of us in my experience genuinely love to chat with library users, we just have a ‘proper’ job to do as well!)
You read a whole book about every 3.5 days?