I'd Rather Be Reading Quotes

“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading!

Rainer Maria Rilke”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Book lovers have strong feelings about bookish scents; some of us get poetic about the distinctive smell of freshly inked paper, or old cloth-covered hardcovers, or a used bookstore. I’ve never cared for the smell of used bookstores myself, but as a devoted reader, I’ve noticed how the books themselves serve as portals to my past, conjuring similarly powerful memories. There’s”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Your library holds all come in at the same time. You have reached your limit on library checkouts, but nine books are waiting for you on hold. You must decide which books to let go of to remain in the library’s good graces.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Your house is a disaster because a clean house is a sign of a misspent life, and you spend yours reading.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“When we're on the road, we seek out good books and new-to-us bookstores in cities and towns we visit. We've bent our driving routes so we could visit not-quite-on-the-way bookstores, and we've even planned entire trips because we wanted to visit a certain bookstore. It's what we do. It's who we are.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“confesses to utilizing questionable bookmark strategies, and self-identifies as a compulsive proofreader.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Taking photos to memorialize the experience isn’t as fun as actually experiencing it. But I feel like taking those photos is a gift to my future self. They’ll let me continue to remember and enjoy the moment months, years, even decades from now.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“It’s easy enough for me to say, “I liked that book,” or “I didn’t,” but I often struggle to explain why. I’m constantly surprised at how difficult it is to articulate my thoughts on what I’ve read in a way that is coherent, useful, and enjoyable, whether I’m sharing a five-thousand-word formal review or a twenty-word text message. But I feel I owe it to my fellow readers to try, because my comments help others decide what is worth reading and what should be read next.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“You find yourself alarmingly invested in the lives of fictional characters. You refer to fictional favorites in conversation as though they’re your friends, and your real friends don’t know who you’re talking about. Your explanation puzzles your friends. You know you refer to a favorite book irritatingly often, but you can’t stop. Someone asks you to name your three favorite books, and you can narrow your list to only five. Or seven. Or seventeen.

You can’t put the book you just finished behind you because you still want to live it. You have a terrible book hangover, and it lasts three days. Ibuprofen does nothing for it. You’re sad because whatever you read next can’t possibly be as good as the book you just finished. You despair because nothing you read can possibly be as good, ever again.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Books provide a safe space to encounter new and unfamiliar situations, to practice living in unfamiliar environments, to test-drive encounters with new people and new experiences. Through our reading, we learn how to process triumph and fear and loss and sadness, to deal with annoying siblings or friend drama or something much, much worse. And when we get to that point in our real life when it’s happening to us, it’s not so unfamiliar. We’ve been there before, in a book. This ability to “preview” real-life experiences through books is one of the big perks readers enjoy.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“I can tell you why I inhale books like oxygen: I’m grateful for my one life, but I’d prefer to live a thousand—and my favorite books allow me to experience more on the page than I ever could in my actual life. A good book allows me to step into another world, to experience people and places and situations foreign to my own day-to-day existence. I love experiencing the new, the novel, the otherwise impossible—especially when I can do it from my own comfy chair.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Sometimes a book prods you to grieve with its characters. You’re immersed in the story, so much so that you feel what they’re feeling. When a beloved character experiences loss—of someone they love, of a friendship, of their innocence—you feel their pain. When he grieves, you grieve with him. Sometimes you grieve the characters themselves: they die, you feel like you’ve lost a friend, and you weep.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Sometimes we’ll read a perfectly good book, but the timing’s all wrong; the same book means different things to different people, or in different seasons of life. Since reading is personal, it can be tricky.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Reader, if you’d rather live in your reading moment than document it, I totally get it. I’d rather be reading too. But learn from my bookish regret: I don’t care what system you use (and I use the word system loosely) as long as you use one. Start today, because as soon as you begin, you’re going to wish you’d begun sooner. Record your books as a gift to your future self, a travelogue you’ll be able to pull off the shelf years from now, to remember the journey.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading! —RAINER MARIA RILKE”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Catch a whiff of caramelized apples, and you’re suddenly five years old again, safe and warm in your mother’s kitchen. The scent of magnolia reminds you of summer afternoons in your grandmother’s living room, where she floated blossoms in crystal bowls on her coffee table. A hint of printer toner takes you back to sixteen, standing at the copy machine at your first job. The smell of Earl Grey and I’m eighteen, bent over my books while my British roommate prepares yet another cup for a late-night study session.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“My head is so full of musings and insights and ideas from books that I’m not sure who I would be or how I would think if they were all taken away.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Bookish enthusiasm is contagious, but it isn’t sufficient—not if I want to find the books that are truly right for me, and for you to find the ones right for you. It’s easy enough for me to say, “I liked that book,” or “I didn’t,” but I often struggle to explain why. I’m constantly surprised at how difficult it is to articulate my thoughts on what I’ve read in a way that is coherent, useful, and enjoyable, whether I’m sharing a five-thousand-word formal review or a twenty-word text message. But I feel I owe it to my fellow readers to try, because my comments help others decide what is worth reading and what should be read next.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“By my midtwenties, I’d made the transition, establishing myself as a reader, coming into my own as one, carving out a space for my own reading life.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Like other kinds of growing up, this doesn’t happen overnight. The transition happens slowly, over time. We make a reading life by reading, and we stumble as we figure it out, learning through trial and error not just what to read for ourselves, but how. Establishing not just that we will be readers, but determining what kind of readers we will be.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“You can’t put the book you just finished behind you because you still want to live it. You have a terrible book hangover, and it lasts three days. Ibuprofen does nothing for it. You’re sad because whatever you read next can’t possibly be as good as the book you just finished. You despair because nothing you read can possibly be as good, ever again. You finish an amazing series and need to grieve that it’s over. You need to mourn the loss of a beloved character. You wonder why these events have no cultural markers, because you definitely need one.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“You’re looking for a book that reminds you why you read in the first place. One written well and that will feel like it was written just for you—one that will make you think about things in a new way, or feel things you didn’t expect a book to make you feel, or see things in a new light. A book you won’t want to put down, whose characters you don’t want to tell good-bye. A book you will close feeling satisfied and grateful, thinking, Now, that was a good one.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“You’re looking for a book that reminds you why you read in the first place. One written well and that will feel like it was written just for you—one that will make you think about things in a new way, or feel things you didn’t expect a book to make you feel, or see things in a new light. A book you won’t want to put down, whose characters you don’t want to tell good-bye. A book you will close feeling”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“I'd like to think I can access my inner four-year-old—curious about the world, skeptical of her little brother, innocently kind, occasionally cruel, always trusting. My inner seven-year-old—full of imagination, turning the creek bed behind my house into a fantasy kingdom ruled by mice. My inner seventeen-year-old—falling in love for the first time, feeling very grown-up making decisions for her future, and at the same time, very young. And now, when I occasionally have moments when I glimpse what I might be like at forty-five, or sixty-eight, or ninety-two, or any of the years to come.

I'd like to add an addendum to Madeleine's theory. Just as I'm all the ages I have been, I'm all the readers I have been.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“When I'm book bossy, I want to see myself as helpful, or knowledgeable, or loving, or smart. But what I'm doing is making judgments, delivering reading recommendations for books that will never be read, not because they weren't on point, but because of how they were delivered.

When I'm book bossy, nobody reads what I recommend—even if the book is a perfect match for a reader, even if she thinks her life will be better for reading it. And I don't blame her. I feel this way too. I suspect we all do.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Yet she wondered if her experience was cheapened because she’d read it before she lived it,”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“William Morris famously wrote, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“they don’t even bother to buy the more sedate-looking Kindle versions anymore, because the e-reader experience just isn’t the same.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“But the truths of many readers’ reading lives make them uncomfortable; their gap isn’t a source of amusement, but frustration. They’re certain their taste is questionable, their opinions are wrong, their reading habits are poor, and it’s only a matter of time before the Book Police track them down.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“Reading is often viewed as a solitary act; that’s one of the reasons I love it, and it’s certainly my favorite escape and introvert coping strategy of choice. But reading is also a social act: readers love to connect over good books. If I read a book that legitimately changes my life (what a find!), or a book that becomes a new favorite, or even a breezy novel that's tons of fun, I can't wait to talk about it with my fellow readers.”
― Anne Bogel, I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life