Top Ten Bookish Confessions

Yeah, it’s Wednesday. Again. But it’s not ‘yet again’! Quite impressive I think, considering that this is my tenth Top Ten Tuesday post! Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is:

1. I consistently forget to renew books on time and get fined. I am slowly getting better at renewing them on time, but the problem is excabated by the fact that…

2. Some library books stay on my shelves/floor for months before I finish reading them. I have developed a strategy to deal with this: I am now only allowed to have one fiction book from the library at once. However, I have multiple non-fiction books on the go from the library and I’m working through them very slowly. But I think that’s reasonable. I can’t be expected to devour an entire textbook about marketing in one go, can I?

3. I keep dropping bookmarks in the bath!

4. When I volunteered as book specialist at a charity shop, I would let books that I liked linger longer on the shelves, whilst others went into the recycling bag. However, I also did the same thing with books by celebrity authors I don’t like – in the hope that someone who might have bought their book new and thus contributed to their fortune would instead pick it up for 99p secondhand. Maybe this one is a bit weird.

5. When it was quiet in the shop I would flick through books that looked terrible based on the cover/blurb/author and read a few paragraphs to confirm my suspicions. I also got through a few little trivia books and joke books in the quiet moments. More notably, I read the whole of Nobody’s Family Is Going to Change in the shop, over the space of a few months.

6. I jump at the opportunity to lend books to friends – because it means more space on my shelves/floor, even temporarily.

7. I often look at what other people are reading on the train, and judge them. If they have an e-reader I read over their shoulder. Usually it’s a Hunger Games or a Harry Potter, which meet with my approval. Sometimes it’s 50 Shades, which does not. Also I find it amusing if they are reading something that matches their appearance. Person in suit reading legal thriller, etc. The other day I saw a hipster reading A Clockwork Orange. I almost laughed out loud.

8. Sometimes I splash soup on books. Therefore I do not eat soup whilst reading a book I bought new. Secondhand books or battered old library books are fair game.

9. I love pretty covers. ’90s book covers, especially for teenage fiction, were terrible. I find cartoonish covers on older-teen fiction really offputting, as I did when I was a actual teenager. In my mind it makes the book look immature. It’s fine for books intended for under 15s, but any older than that and I think a more adult-looking cover is the way to go.

10. Sometimes while reading I’ll skip ahead to see what happens and then go back to read what I’ve missed. I hate this habit and I am trying to force myself not to do it any more.

Anybody share my bad habits and/or quirks?