You wake up and, like every morning, feel around with your palm for the blaring – and annoying – alarm clock on your nightstand. Inevitably, you knock over the glass of water that you’d been drinking before going to bed last night, and you don’t quite wake up until you realize that the book you were also reading before bed happened to be right in the path of projection.

You jump up quickly and immediately panic takes over. You’re screaming as if someone’s been murdered, you’re frantically jumping around, hoping that the water didn’t damage the pages of the book, or soak through the dust jacket – or, god forbid, warp the cardboard binding of the book.

This is a not-so-typical, but not-so-rare day in the life of a book lover.

Us book lovers are a different sort of breed. We’re awkward, we read more than we speak, and our best friends are more often than not those characters that we read in our favorite books. If you or someone you know is a book lover (guilty as charged), you’ve probably heard these five things, or, even experienced them yourself.

Hardcover vs paperback vs mass market paperback vs E-book

Growing up in the 90s – yeah, yeah, so I wasn’t fully grown by 2k…bite me – I have a very nostalgic attachment to R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series. Everyone knows that they were always released as paperbacks. However, as time progressed, I grew to love the hardcover book. As a reader, a book collector, or both, there is nothing more frustrating than having a book in a series that doesn’t match your others. For example, it drives me nuts that I have the paperback version of Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses, but the hardback version of its sequel.

They aren’t the same size, and they don’t line up correctly on my shelves, and I just can’t.

Also, who likes E-books? I don’t want to read tiny text on my phone, and I can’t even turn a real page. What’s the point?

Bookshelves

I guess I need to elaborate on this. First of all, bookshelves are way too expensive. I’d rather chop my own tree and do the woodwork myself – then I would know its durability, and I’d finally have a shelf big enough for all of the books that I own.

Kidding. But seriously, there is nothing more frustrating than when you’re trying to line up a series on the bookshelf and then you run out of room and are forced to completely reorganize your books.

Also, what is the best way to organize your books? I always want to do a favorites shelf, but I can never fit them all. If I do it alphabetically, inevitably that cursed problem of the books being at different heights will drive me insane, and it looks so odd. And then there are some people who do it by color. First of all, ain’t nobody got time for that. Secondly, I have waaaay too many blue books; if I’m going to have a rainbow it has to be evenly distributed in its colors, right?

OTP Is a Myth

As a person who reads, on average, four books a month, many of them new, how am I expected to choose one true pairing? And what if I don’t agree with the author’s choice in love interest? What if all of the men or women just suck as human beings and I want them to be alone for the extension of the novel – or book series?

TBR

To-Be-Read piles are hard, especially as someone who doesn’t like to plan things. You have all of these books, and not enough time to read them. You also have to anticipate releases, and that’s hard to do. Plus, making a list of what you plan to read can definitely contribute to the dreaded reading slump.

The Reading Slump

As someone who likes to read on a semi-flexible-schedule-type-thing, reading slumps can break you. It can last for minutes, months, or even for some years, and there’s nothing more discouraging. Picking up a book that you have so much interest in, and being unable to get into it is kind of heartbreaking.

Are you a reader? What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of being a reader? Sound off in the comments below!