Sitting down in your favorite spot with a good book is one of the many joys in life. It is relaxing and wonderful to get into a book and be captivated by perfectly strung words and phrases for minutes or perhaps hours at a time. Unfortunately, there are certain struggles that readers know all too well and here is only a short list of them.
1. Desperately wishing for another arm.
You finally sit down with your book and drink/snack of choice only to find that it is impossible to hold your book while sipping on your tea unless you want to ruin the cover and the spine. Now you put down your tea or your bowl of ice cream or whatever your comfort food is and try to focus. Finally, you decide to lay on your back and prop the book up just right so you can take little sips or bites to now realize you need to turn the page. If only you had another hand or two to hold your book so you could drink your tea before it gets cold.
2. You have to log off all social media if the book is the newest one in a series.
You cannot risk accidentally reading any spoilers or else it might quite literally kill you. So, you log off all social media, grab your snacks, and basically lock yourself up for the next 24 hours. If your friends have read the book, you beg them not to spoil anything for you unless if they have a death wish. Also, you don't want anyone else's opinions of the book to influence your own. You want to experience the book for the first time without interruption or bias.
3. Reading a book in public is always risky.
You never know how reading while in a public place will go. Will you burst out into tears at that ending scene or just quietly and calmly close the book? Will you become so frustrated that you slam it shut and pout as you wait for the bus to come? Will you blush and giggle like a mad person because something so incredibly beautiful has happened whether it be that two character finally confessed their love, one character teased another, etc.? The possibilities are endless and you wonder if it is worth the risk?
4. Buying books is always an adventure that ends in an empty wallet.
You need to be super careful when walking into any bookstore, going to any book tent, logging onto any book-related website, etc. or else your wallet will suffer. However, you never know what you'll find! You may walk into a book tent at a church picnic and find a copy of a book that you've been dying to read or a book that looks really good that you've never heard of before. Once you get to the check out you hand over your money and promise yourself that you will read these books and they will not end up on your bedside table with the other books you bought and promised to read. (SPOILER: They all end up on your bedside table and collect dust)
5. Book hangovers are the worst.
You have just finished a book that has touched your mind, body, and soul and now it is over. Nothing now compares to this book and you don't even bother to reach for that pile of books next to your bed because you're just not emotionally ready yet. What do you do? You reread the book until you can cope. If you're lucky, it is a part of a series and now you just need to wait until the next one comes out. In that case, you reread it and memorize every word and phrase until it is ingrained into your brain. If that book was the last of the series or is a stand alone novel you also reread it until you can cope and move on.
6. You wanted to love it, but you couldn't.
Your friends raved about a particular book and you decided to read it because of the high praise it received only to discover that it just wasn't as good as you thought it would be. Something about the book just didn't do it for you and as much as you wanted to love it, you didn't and couldn't. You now wonder if it is you that has the bad taste in books or your companions.
7. How do you pack books for vacation???
How many books is too many to bring on a vacation? You could always bring less clothes to make room for that new book you bought and just hope you didn't need that extra pair of shorts. You could always bring another bag solely for your books, but then that will be soooooo heavy and is probably a bad idea. You just simply cannot choose though and decide to take a small library with you that is extremely heavy and you don't read half of the books you brought.
8. Wanting to read a book, but realizing that you have a super busy schedule at the moment.
It's been awhile since you've read a good book and you decide that it's about time you have. You plan to read before bed or during a moment of free time that day only to realize that free time is basically nonexistent in your life. The book you chose sits on your desk and practically screams "Read me!", but you don't have time. You have a paper due in three of our classes or papers to grade or files to look over and you still haven't eaten dinner. Your book will just have to wait.
9. Reading really messes with your sleep schedule.
So, you decided to pick up a book and read. You tell yourself as soon as you get comfy and open it that you're not staying up late and you're not finishing the whole book in one night. A few hours later, you are enthralled in the story you hold in your hands, look at the clock and claim only one more chapter. Another few hours have passed and you are near the end. It is now 3 a.m. and the book you picked up hours ago is now finished. You may or may not be surrounded in tissues, candy wrappers, and other various snacks. While the book was amazing and you are happy to have read it, it is now way past your bedtime and you need to somehow be a fully functioning human being in a few hours.
10. The characters are fictional.
For all the fiction lovers, there is the constant struggle to cope with the fact that the characters you just spent time befriending or falling in love with are not real. People will poke fun at you for this and it is a terrible feeling. They will say "But he/she isn't real?" and look at you as if you have four heads. For a brief period of time, those characters were actual people and they became a part of your life. Not many people understand this feeling, but to all the lovers of fiction, you are not alone.
11. After finishing a book, you now must go back into reality.
While you were stuck in another time and in another place with other people, life continued. People were continuing on with their lives as you read the most heart-wrenching, most beautiful, most inspiring, most profound, most intriguing book. You want to tell everyone about these characters and now friends, these thoughts and ideas, these trials and tribulations, these revelations and discoveries, these places and adventures you have just read about. It was more than just a book though, it was so much more and now you need to seep back into reality.
