Ever feel your eye twitch when someone interrupts you while reading? Or does your gag reflex engage when someone tells you that they’ve seen the movie and that’s the same as reading the book? Then this post is for you!

This week’s Broke and the Bookish Top Ten Tuesday post is all about the book related problems I wrestle with. Maybe you struggle with the same bookish people problems that I do. If so, fear not. This is a safe space. And we can commiserate in the comments.

1. Shelf Space

Every reader out there probably has this problem. So many books to covet but such limited room. Making the tough purchasing decisions can be kind of painful. Choosing a book at a bookstore can be its own poignant agony, and then deciding whether or not to keep said book after reading it is a whole other kind of anxiety for me. I try to only keep the books that I would re-read and am a big believer in used bookstores for the books that I cannot justify keeping. I assuage my guilt of getting rid of a book with a “pay it forward” mentality.

2. Incapable of Finishing a TBR List

Seriously though. TBR posts are very common on Top Ten Tuesday and I have never fully completed one. My to-read list on my Goodreads account is currently stocked at 139 and it continues to grow. I get too sidetracked by other books, or, you know, life events to truly finish all the books I say I’m going to read. Which leads to…

3. Never Enough Time

Closely related to item number two, I sometimes find myself stricken by anxiety at the idea that I will never get to read all the books I’d like to read. Sometimes the idea gives me chest pains. I’m not kidding. I have given myself panic attacks about my inability to read everything I want to read in a lifetime. Priorities have never been so painful!

4. Resisting the Hype

I refused to read Harry Potter for two years after its initial release. The Harry Potter series are some of my all-time favorite books and I resisted them for TWO YEARS because I was annoyed by the hype. I think there is a glitch in my brain that stubbornly denies the appeal of popular opinion until said opinion has moved on. I do this with movies and TV shows as well. It’s a genuine problem.

5. Keeping Up With Trends

Closely tied in with problem number four is a burgeoning curiosity about trends. I want to know what’s going on in the book-world, so that I can resist it, and then scramble to keep up with it. I realize this is nuts. But it’s how I roll.

6. Wandering in Bookstores

I’m a methodical bookstore wanderer. I have to make a circle of the whole dang store. HAVE TO. Lord, help me if there are multiple floors. It’s not that I look at every book or every shelf precisely, but I don’t want to miss anything I might want to read. This isn’t a problem for me when I have leisure time but if I’m with people and I can’t complete the circuit I feel let down. Not to the point that I need to tell my friends that I need to look at the whole store, but close.

7. Airport Bookstores are my Drug of Choice

In the last five years I can count on one hand the times I have walked out of an airport without at least one book. It has become compulsory for me to look at the books in airport bookstores–the little kiosks with touristy junk, Cheetos, and three narrow shelves of books. It’s a drug and I’m all about it.

8. Movie ≠ Book

If you tell me you’re just not a reader, I have to accept that because people are different and differences are great. But if you try to tell me that watching the movie is the same as reading the book, I am trying really hard not to shake you. Movies and books are different creatures: like a house cat and a lion on the Serengeti. They may have some genetic traits in common but they’re wildly different animals. Capiche?

9. Fantasy, Always Fantasy

I have been reading romance novels since I was about twelve. Now I don’t have unrealistic expectations about reality in the bedroom department or even the physicality department (I mean it would be nice if a ruggedly handsome biker with a heart of gold turned out to be my soul mate but I’m not banking on it). Nope, my problem is that in romance novels there is a moment where you’re swept off your feet closely followed by a deep emotionally transparent conversation. I don’t expect that, per se, but fantasizing over it definitely a thing that I do. *Sigh*

10. Just One More Chapter

Every bibliophile has told themselves this potent lie more times than they would like to admit. I haven’t gone to bed before midnight in weeks for this very reason. I can’t truly call this a “problem” because I love doing it, but it does have some ramifications on my intellectual presence the next day.

I realize for many of these bookish problems, I am not alone. Some of them, I might be on my own, but personal quirks aside I think these are fairly typical. Tell me all about your best and worst problems in the comments!

Thanks for popping in!