group discussion

Anyone else have weird reading habits? I never thought I did until I noticed my recent tendency to read books of a subject or type all together.

For example, I'm reading Animal Vegetable Miracle, Eat Pray Love and In Defense of Food all at once.

I also sometimes just get stuck at page 70ish, even if a book is good. Not sure why it happens. But there it is.

I also do not dog ear pages. I use book marks, bits of string, tape flags, etc. Nor do I highlight in books. I have a notebook for notes.

Anyone have any quirks?

I love this topic, Xy!

I'm VERY particular about book marks. While I have lots of them (does anyone who reads a lot NOT have a huge collection of bookmarks?) my favorites are those Levengers Book Bungies.

I also have that tendency to wander away from a book I'm enjoying fairly early on. Thus do I have all my Levengers Bookmarks in books lately.

I tend to put Broadarts on my hardback dust jackets. I blame this rather expensive habit on one of my best friends, who sells first and signed editions.

I mentioned elsewhere that I wiggle while I read. I can't be still. As a kid, I would plop tummy down on the floor next to my chair. For reasons still not clear to me, I would hook the chair with my feet and manipulate it around while I read. It's hard to explain, but it made my dad nuts to watch me. I'm not sure if he was concerned that I would clunk myself in the head or that I would break the chair.

I only mark in books that I'm studying, but when I am studying a book, I have Post-It Flags and highlighters, and THEN I write down all my marked lines in a notebook, which means I effectively read the book twice. This helped a lot in classes. Usually, if I am going to mark in a fiction book, I will buy a used paperback copy. I can't quite make myself write in a hardback book.

I tend to cover books I'm reading, too. I have a set of Hardbacker book covers (Hardbacker.com) in several sizes. I can keep my reading anonymous and protect the covers, too. I really don't like to damage my books. A damaged book is just sad, and the ones in my collection were all bought used.

I have kept lists of my books since long before Goodreads, too. A book doesn't feel completed until I write it in my list for the year.

Lately, though, I just have a frustrating problem reading at all. My focus is so poor that I can't keep my mind on a book -- everything is a distraction and I can't sink down into that lovely "reader zone" where I have the full sensory experience in my head and there is nothing around me. It isn't the books I'm reading, as it happens with EVERYTHING. That's one reason I spend a lot of time here -- at least I can talk about books.

Um, I also don't like to sit and read. I prefer to lie down and read. On a bed or a couch, but I've done it on a floor. (Generally at home, not in public).

And I'm fussy about people bending spines of books. If I see a book open, face down, I kind of tense up and want to go fix it.

Did I mention that I'm fussy? :P

I've had the poor focus, too, lately. I managed to finish 'Night' because it was short. But I'm still working on some others. I'm chalking it up to the full moon and restless leg syndrome. Hopefully, it will pass. I like PBS, but I like to read more...

I'm blaming brain chemicals, myself, and a variety of weird and painful physical issues. In short, my warranty ran out.

My reading weirdness takes odd forms, too, especially in the categorization, storage, and display of my precious books. Here I wrestle with my shelves, striving for short names that make sense, and as few shelves as possible that still give me (and anyone who looks) information about the books. At home, I'm struggling even more -- you know I've moved into a much smaller home, and I no longer have a beautiful room devoted to books. In fact, I have much less space for book storage, so a lot of my books are kept in a storage unit some miles from my house (where I go visit them). I'm struggling with getting books where I need them to be and it feels like I'm constantly shifting books around.

I tend to read at least 4 books at a time, sometimes as many as 10. Usually most of them are non-fiction, but sometimes I'll have several fiction books going at once as well. As a result I tend to not finish things quickly. It's a sign that something has really grabbed me if I read it straight through, setting aside my other books. 'Oscar Wao' grabbed me that way. 'The Road' I managed to string out over several months. It was like extruding glass out of my eye sockets.

I also tend to beat the shit out of the paperbacks I read. Hardbacks I treat very carefully, use postits as bookmarks, or fold the dustjacket in to save my place. But paperbacks get dogeared, broken spines, coffee stains, random phone numbers scribbled in the back pages. I view it as a victory to leave my mark on them. When they sit on my shelves afterward I can look and see... ah yes, that was the one I read in Hawaii in '98. You can still see the mango juice on that one page. : )

*gasp* Book abuser! Heathen! ;)


I think I preserve my books because I have bookseller friends who sometimes will trade books with me. That makes it (partially at least) a financial consideration -- a new book for my gently used old book. Mostly, though, I just don't like looking at a beaten up book. I'm not one to (pardon the connotations of the phrase) mark my passage -- I prefer to leave things more or less untouched.

Paperbacks do have a real disposable air about them, though, but at $7.00 and up per new, I can't justify not treating them sweetly.

I'm glad, though, that I'm not the ONLY one who has several books going at one time. In my case, I like to think of it as "eclectic" and "a book for every mood", but I suspect it's just an attention deficit disorder.

Speaking of paperbacks - I'm a bit of a snob. I would gladly spend more money for a trade paperback, even a hard cover, over the dry/musty smell of a mass market paperback. Something about the ink on your hands, the dry smell, quickly yellowing paper - it just lessens the reading experience for me. Anyone else?

I hate when cheap paperbacks don't have enough white space in the gutter, and you have to really wrench the book open to see the words in the middle. And then, that loosens the pages, which are just glued in, of course, and they start falling out.
The only thing a cheap paperback is good for is reading in the bathtub, because who cares if the steam warps the pages? They are just going to fall out anyway.
The only weird reading habit I can think of is that I take off the dust jackets while reading my hardbacks. I find them distracting - they move around too much.

Yep, dust jackets are folded away while I read, Jackie. I'll put a protective cover on the book while I'm reading it, and then put the dust jacket in a Brodart.

I almost feel guilty when I read one of my non-dust jacket, leatherette bound books, because even though they are stitched and not glued, they get loose. There's just no winning. Of course, a cheap paste board hardcover is even WORSE.

Oops -- I have to correct something I said. The cheap hardback copy of The Complete Shakespeare I got as a teen is much marked because I read the plays by highlighting one character, then reread it highlighting in a different color a different character. The book has very tiny print and it kept my astigmatism from crossing lines as I read.

Well, recently, I've been on a mission re: book collection. I began mooching books at Bookmooch, and was just thrilled by it. So, in the end I had to obtain 2 more bookshelves.

The good news is mooching served a dual purpose; I got of the ones I didn't want anymore. lol

I fold away dust jackets. Also, I won't buy a hardback book without a dust jacket and for that reason the local bookseller loves it when I come with a cache of books for him. They are worth more and they sell better.

:)

I wish publishers would make all books the same height and width. It really bothers me that my bookshelves are not all neat and linear because some are taller than others and some stick out farther than others.

I'm a paperback abuser, too. You can tell which books on my shelves are my favorites because they are the most "loved."

I feel it with you, Sarah, although within reason I don't mind a bit of variety. Within reason.

I'm a completionist, too, so one of my pet peeves is when I am collecting a series and the format or cover art changes -- especially when a series starts only in paperback and then goes into hardback. I have shelves sized for paperbacks only, and I hate having part of a series in one place and parts elsewhere If I start a series in hardback, I buy the hardbacks. If i start in paper, I stick with it (or go back and replace if I must).

I'm a completionist also. In fact, I've kept buying books in series I hated just because I couldn't bear to leave it unfinished. Even though I hated it. Gah.

Oh, I have to know what series that is! I've resisted that (although it bothers me!) because I've gotten so damn picky in my old age :)

Ugh, I'd have to post the series in the Shelves of Embarrassment, Sherri, because it's that bad.

I'm getting better though at not wasting precious reading time on books I know in advance are gonna be crap. In fact the author recently released another sequel and I haven't bought it. Yay me!

Sherri, I had that trouble with the Patrick O'Brian Master & Commander series. Norton changed art, book size and everything...Urgh. So now I have to try and look for ones of a specific edition so my bookshelves aren't too weird and funky.

I think I must have been a librarian in a former life.

Hurray Sarah! Isn't it empowering not to give in to the completionist compulsion.

I actually have a series that I purchased the forth book, but i can't quite make myself read it (the 5th and 6th books are out and I've managed to ignore them.)


Xy, that's just plain irritating.

Ah, some fellow paper back abusers! I go out of my way to crack the spine so the pages are flat. I hate when they curl in on the lines, it bothers me visually, I want a straight line.

I'm far more careful of hardbooks, and take the covers off otherwise they get too wrinkled and such, but more importantly they get in the way.

Since I carry my books around from living room to bed, I always lost bookmarks, they slip out. Or else they slip out while I'm reading them. So I use the ones that are more like a clip. They stay in the book while I'm reading and transporting them. Yes they make a slight indentation, but I'm not that much of a purist. Books are meant to get comfortable with. I go through periods of months when I misplace them, so then it's face down.

My shelves are a mess. My to-read collection, separate from what's listed here, is so vast I had to box the others for 12 shelves. I hated doing that! I'm looking for another unit, but my house is pretty much taken up and my husband is muttering about where I would squeeze it in. My dream is to alphabetize my books, but hard and soft go separately. I'd keep separate sections as well.

I never used to buy books, so expensive, the library was fine. But for the past 2 years I hit up GoodWill and used bookstores, I like to be able to pick and choose according to my mood at the time.

I can only read one book at a time, because if I'm not fully engrossed in it I'll put it away. I'm also a completionist in that if I'm reading a series I read in order without taking a break.

Lori -- book bungies from Levengers. They are beautiful because they just don't fall out, and they hold the book closed. When you are reading, they can go over the back cover to wait for you. I order myself a half dozen every year, and another dozen or so to give as gifts.

I have one shelf in alphabetical order -- the hardback to be read shelf. The rest are kind of in order more or less by subject, or by size, or because I can turn enough of them on their side to squeeze in a load more.

I had to give up on library books. I'm over careful with them (they aren't mine, after all, and I am solicitous of other's property) and never feel comfortable reading them.

My books are organized first by genre and then alphabetical by author.

I like to use the magnetic bookmarks.

This is really interesting.

I used to obsessively mark and highlight books but I tend to get most of my books from the library now so I do a lot less of that than I once did. However, I'll mark pages by folding corners on the bottom of pages. I hope no one at the library minds.

I use old concert tickets for bookmarks.

I agree with Sarah in that a loved book often looks as if it's been left out in a hurricane.

The library would prefer you use those tiny little post it notes, RA. :D

No, I'm serious.

I have two shelves of To Read Next books which glare at me every day or sometimes seductively wave, or openly mock, depending. They're in size order. I think there are about four standard paperback sizes. Currently they go from the littlest one which is The Alchemical Wedding of Alistair Crompton by Robert Sheckley, one of your little Four Square SF paperbacks from the 60s, up to the recent novel A Golden Age by Tahmina Anam - the tallest one, not the longest one. The biggest one is Underworld.

*sigh* because of my magpie-like book collecting (and the influence of book selling friends, the pushers) I currently have a 7 foot high, 3 foot wide shelf of hardbacks I have yet to read in my living room. In the hall leaving TO my living room, on a slightly shorter but wider shelf, are two deeply piled shelves of trade paperbacks, also not read. Upstairs are a smattering of paperbacks also not yet read.

I feel guilt. Bookstarved children in foreign lands and all that...

All us geeky readers should have a moment's silence for Art Garfunkel who shows us all either how to do it or how not to do it, depending

http://www.artgarfunkel.com/li...

I read an article where he says that he keeps his books on shelves in the precise order he read them, every single one right there going back to his teenage years when he first conceived this mad plan. Is this cool or is this a treatable condition?