Jaya Saxena: “Oooh, I love romance novels, always on planes or while traveling. And most of the time halfway through I’ll just start skipping to the sex scenes. I also often leave them on planes/in hotels for other people to find and enjoy, because I do not need those taking up space. I am also one of those people who reads the last sentence in a book first. No idea why. I never remember them by the time I get to the end; I just have to look.”
Harry Burns: “Oh, really? When I buy a new book, I read the last page first. That way, in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.”
Shani Hilton: “I like to read books aloud to myself. Not the whole thing, but an occasional page or two. That’s probably my biggest idiosyncrasy, and if it doesn’t sound good while I’m reading it aloud, I probably won’t finish it.”
Nicole Cliffe: ”I used to tear off and eat the bottom of book pages. Until I was basically 13. I would roll them into little joint-looking things and then eat them idly while I read. I also always drink ice water when re-reading Dune, and I greatly prefer to read on my side with a hand propped under my ear, and then I switch when it gets tired. And I always eat chocolate-cover
Toast Reader Menshevixen: “If I can’t hear Kevin Conroy’s voice in my head when I read a Batman comic, I usually drop that comic.”
Mallory Ortberg: “I read in the shower, which other people seem to treat as an impossible task. It’s not! It’s pretty easy. You have two arms. One for showering, one for reading. Easy. Eventually once it’s time to wash that hand you have to fling the book over the shower curtain, which is tough if you have downstairs neighbors, but it’s fine. I also stop reading Brideshead Revisited at the halfway mark every time and pretend Charles and Sebastian got together and opened a bed and breakfast.
I also–I’m not even sure what you call this, exactly, but my friend Jenny taught me this in sixth grade and I’ve been doing it idly to magazines and newspapers ever since–I’ll put my index finger under a page and put my thumb on the edge, and sort of fold it into a triangle and then slowly push the point back to the page’s edge. So it leaves these little creases, and sometimes tears, in the page. I do it all the time, but I have no idea what you call it.”
Christian Brown: ”I usually read two books at the same time, one fiction and one non-fiction. And there are some authors I basically will only read aloud. Oh, and when I’m driving (I live in LA) I sometimes have my Kindle on the passenger seat next to me and I’ll read a sentence or two at every red light, because I live dangerously.”
Mike Dang: “Well, one thing I did when I was younger was, I would cut out images from a magazine of what I thought characters would look like, and use them as bookmarks. Like images of random people from my cousin’s issue of Seventeen because we didn’t really have magazines at my house.”
[Image via Flickr]
Tags: books, christian brown, did you spot the when harry met sally quote, jaya saxena, mike dang, reading, shani hilton, weird personal habits
THIS WAS ON THE RECORD????
Now the cops are gonna arrest me for DWR
Look on the bright side, you might get to meet Werner Herzog.
Two days ago I passed a lady who didn’t even put the book on the passenger seat, she had that mofo straight open and resting on the steering wheel (I guess so she could also catch a sentence or two on stretches of straight road, not just at red lights?)
I constantly catch myself skipping bits in books, also long internet reads, my eyes just kind of slide down a couple paragraphs, such that I can sort of get the gist of them but not the details and if I don’t catch myself doing it I can miss important things! It’s a symptom of my personality, I’m always looking to the next thing instead of just being where I am.
also I used to tear little squares out of the corners of the pages of my Babysitters Club paperbacks – I am a bookbinder’s daughter and they were the only books of sufficiently shitty quality that I felt okay about it, so my little obsessive side came out there.
I do the opposite. I’ll reread the same paragraphs over and over, as if I’ve missed something. This also likely relates to my personality.
I do that when I’m tired because the words lose meaning. When I realize I’ve read something for the fifth time and it still ain’t sinking in, it’s time to go to bed.
I do both of those things!
I often read paragraphs out of order, especially for internet long reads. I hate skimming and like to be thorough in my reading, so I will always methodically go back and read every single paragraph, but I can’t seem to stop myself from skipping down the page.
ONLY for internet long reads, but I do this exactly. I think it’s a way of making sure I’m not wasting my time by poisoning my mind with some idiotic inconsequential notions. Like if I’m not sure about the main character being interviewed, I’ll skip down to a lengthy quote and determine if they deserve my attention. I am an anonymous asshole when I’m not being characterized as an easily identifiable ass. But I don’t do that with The Toast or Hairpin comments ever. Those always get read from start to finish.
I do that a lot with dialogue. I’ll read quickly through the dialogue on a couple of pages, skipping the paragraphs in between. Then I have to forcibly stop myself and go back and read through everything.
OH and in addition if I am reading and suspect a twist or cliffhanger is coming at the end of the chapter I literally have to cover the last para with my fingers to stop my eyes from skipping to it.
You are my people.
HAH, me too. I get so annoyed with myself when I accidentally read the end of a chapter before I’ve gotten there. It totally fucks up all the suspense that is BUILDING, GOD.
Me too! When I read longreads on the internet I scroll a paragraph at a time so that everything after the one I’m reading is off the screen to prevent myself from doing it.
Oh god I do the sliding thing too. I worry this is because the internet has destroyed my ability to process long bits of text. 🙁
Yep yep yep. I hadn’t even thought of it as a symptom of my personality, but…oh.
I have a thing where I hate reading for only 20 or 30 minutes at a time (mostly I read fiction). If I don’t have a good 3-5 hours to just sit and read a book from cover to cover, it’s so hard for me to get into it. And if I *am* into the book, I lose total awareness of anything happening around me. A meteor could hit and I wouldn’t look up.
My other thing, which is related to the first one, is that if I’m into a book and need to get somewhere, like back to work from a lunch break, I will read while walking. This is not the brightest move.
This is me, which is why I don’t think I’ve read a novel since my daughter was born. I’m terrified she’ll get the door open and wander away while I’m in a book-trance.
Book trance! It’s a real thing! I can’t remember which culture it was (Amish?) that believed that you could become trapped, literally spellbound, while reading. You always have to read a little bit backwards to work yourself out.
I always used to read while I walked when I was a kid (this did probably not help my dorky reputation, but oh well), and I always want to do it now that I’m a grownup, but am too chicken.
I’m the same way, which is why I read mostly nonfiction these days. I’ve never understood how people can read novels on the toilet.
When I was a kid I used to read in the laundry room on top of the washing machine because no one would think to look for me there. I still associate laundry noises with the giant illustrated edition of Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera and with the multicolored-pages editions of the Oz books.
I read like 5 or 6 books at a time, but not like all at once. It’s about my only ADD-esque habit. I start a book, and even if I’m really into it, sometimes I get distracted by another book, and then even if I’m into that I’ll get distracted by another book. I’m currently reading A Fire Upon the Deep, The Signal and The Noise, Snuff, Caliban’s War and Uncanny X-Force vol. 4.
The problem with this being, depending on the book, I’ll often have to go back and re-read the last few chapters .With something like The Signal and The Noise, it’s not an issue because it’s fairly segmented and not really narrative. With A Fire Upon the Deep… I haven’t picked it up in about a month or more, so I’m really gonna have to do a refresher.
This is gross but when I read I kill my nails and if I am laying in bed reading I mean both my finger and toe nails. I should mention that this is done mindlessly, I will stop reading and be like “where did all of my nail polish go?” or “why do I have all of these hang nails”. Sadly my mind is not strong enough to focus on reading and kill terrible nail habits.
oh, yeah, no, I do the same thing.
I lean like Nicole does (lying in bed, lying on the couch, leaning sideways on the back of my chair at work – it’s always driven my parents crazy that I’m such a leaner, but apparently it’s not uncommon for asperger’s kids or kids with hyperflexibility to develop the habit), and then i pick at my toenails or my fingernails or my eyebrows or my hair. I have honest-to-god pulled out half an eyebrow on occasion (and my eyebrows are thick caterpillar things). And when I have a zit, ugh. Blankets or furniture with pills on them don’t last long when I’m reading, either. I never wear nail polish anymore, because it doesn’t last long.
I tried to start crocheting or knitting or something while reading, but that uses too many hands, and I need one to hold the book/Kindle and turn the page… It works well when I’m watching tv or movies, though. I try to always have some yarn to fidget with when I’m settling in for a long tv session.
(Also, I felt so embarrassed at university, because I’d be sitting in class paying attention and unable to stop picking at the use bookstore stickers all over my texts. It made a mess and looked like I was bored, but I swear I couldn’t help it.)
Reading catalogs is 100% more enjoyable if the television is on in the background
Ever since I got married my reading has gone way down because my wife keeps moving the books I’m working on out of the bathroom.
Did you know she did this before you married her?
I’m pretty sure she was too scared to go into my bathroom before we got married.
shortly after my dad’s wife moved in with him, he told me exasperatedly that she kept “hiding things!” and I was like “No Dad, she is just putting them away.”
I hate leaving books in the bathroom because they get ruined from the moisture. My weird OCD book thing is keeping them pristine, which is a challenge with paperbacks.
I borrow books from people and then never ever read them and then finally give them back with the person I borrowed them from is moving away.
YOU MONSTER
I GAVE THEM BACK!
“OH I’LL JUST MAKE ROOM FOR IT IN MY TIGHTLY PERFECTLY PACKED BOOK BOXES THEN”
– EVERYONE YOU HAVE EVER BORROWED A BOOK FROM
Give me some credit. I don’t wait until they are all packed to show up at their door and give them a stack of books! I show up at least a day earlier.
Books are always among the first things I pack because they’re relatively easy, and also because book boxes are heavy and therefore have to sit at the bottom of the box piles. And because I feel a certain pride in making them “tightly perfectly packed.”
I do this, but I refuse to feel bad about it. Generally speaking, the only books people lend to me are books they really really think I need to read/would like to read, and not books I’ve asked to borrow. For some reason it’s usually people whose taste in books is nothing like mine that press books upon me.
Once I lent a copy of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, which is my favourite book, to a friend. And she NEVER EVER gave it back, to the point where five years later I am still vaguely irritated by it. Even after my BFF gave me a gorgeous classic copy to replace it.
That is absolutely a book I ate large swaths of.
I have lent three copies of Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners to people, and no one has ever returned a copy. I think some books are just like this. Also, Kelly Link is awesome. Will someone on this site please interview Kelly Link? Thanks.
Five years later and without knowing either of you, I am irritated FOR you. I have three separate copies of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (also MY favorite book) and will never lend any of them. (Though I do have special Lending Copies of a few things, for example, the first Hunger Games book.) One does not fuck with Francie Nolan.
I lent one of my favorite books to a guy (so stupid), and while he didn’t wait an insanely long time to give it back, he clearly kept it in his bathroom the whole time because the (hard)cover was warped and the pages were a little ripply.
ETA: Wordplay by John Langdon
Sometimes I just cannot wait long enough to get home and I’ll start reading a book from the library as I am walking out, to my car or my next errand or whatever. Or read a sentence or two at stoplights. DANGEROUS. I know, I need to stop.
The only/best way to read a catalogue is bringing it in with the mail so it’s warm from the sun, then sitting at the kitchen table and leafing through it with a Diet Coke and some snacks.
As a preteen I used to sneak (well, there was no sneaking involved, so “walk”) to the aisle of the library with the “your changing body” type books and read the sections about periods and breasts and stuff because I was too embarassed to check them out. Sometimes I would read the boys’ books and get all tingly and weird feeling.
The best place on earth to read is my parents’ backyard, on the patio, with your feet up, and a glass of cold drinks, sitting in the shade. I spent a week rereading Gone with the Wind in exactly this way, the last summer I spent at my parents’ place, and every single moment of it was superb.
When I was little- and now my boyfriend has got wind of it, still- the most common thing anyone ever said to me was “Bookie down, Ella” and it meant “Please stop reading while you are doing that thing.” Also, the only time I was ever hit ever as a kid was two times in one day, and both times for walking into the path of a car because I was reading. READING ALWAYS READING.
The only time I ever got in trouble in school was because I had a habit of propping my desk on top of my head and reading ~*~in secret~*~ during class. Whenever the teacher asked me what I was doing I would claim I was looking for scissors or a pencil or whatever, but once I wasn’t quick enough and the teacher discovered what I was doing and sent a note home. Suffice it to say my parents weren’t that upset.
The one time I got in MAJOR trouble with a teacher in elementary school, I was reading a book during math time in 5th grade, because I’d already tested out of that unit and didn’t think I had to pay attention, because I’d finished my special assignment already. Apparently I was setting a bad example. And my mom was assistant-teaching down the hall, so she got called over during break to have a parent-teacher-child conference. 🙁 I think I was reading “Carry On, Mr Bowditch” or something – I was obsessed with old timey sea-faring books around then.
I tested out of the normal reading groups and just got sent to the library during reading time. Best part of my lonely, lonely childhood.
This was me and one other boy in kindergarten, except we got to go hang out with the fourth graders and read Call of the Wild. Loved it.
Ohhh I almost got beaten up in sixth grade because I was reading during some boring remedial part of class, and another girl complained, and the teacher said “Well, Molly can read and learn math at the same time, unlike the rest of you.” THANKS A LOT MRS. WHOEVER. Luckily they decided that threatening to beat me up and kicking all of my books down the hall was sufficient.
I did this too! Only detention in my life: “STOP READING UNDER THE DESK, YOU!!!”
My parents were pretty mad that I’d broken the perfect streak, though, for a dumbass YA book.
Oh man I did that all the time. I also got in trouble for continuing to read after Reading Time was over.
Learning to work the system from an early age!
I got in trouble for this constantly. Like every 15 minutes. The teacher would confiscate my book and I’d pull out another book. Unrelatedly, I never learned math.
I got scolded for reading under my desk during read-aloud hour in elementary school.
In my defense, the teacher was reading a *really* boring book that month.
Ah. Yep. This happened to me. Or, I did this a lot.
I am also like Jaya and read the last sentence first (what happens if I am hit by a bus and die without getting to the ending?!)
And Mike Dang’s photo habit has melted my icy heart.
Another got-in-trouble-for-reading-in-math-class kid over here. I love nerd-dom now, looking back, but at the time it was a great source of angst.
I did this, too, and I also got in trouble for reading during the mandatory Moment of Silence when I was apparently supposed to be thinking about Jesus or something. Reading is my praying, ok?
“Bookie down” sounds like it could also be the opposite – like, “go sit somewhere with a book.” That’s what I would pretend it meant.
I used to read while rollerblading!
Do you remember what you were reading that day?
Reading while walking is lovely, it makes me feel like Lizzy Bennet
I spent a very enjoyable afternoon last fall doing the same thing on my parents’ patio with Lonesome Dove.
I almost always read the last page first. I am one of those people who really needs to be prepared for, say, the dog to die.
I only read the last sentence. It fulfills the compulsion to skip to the end and devour something I’m not supposed to have yet, and on the plus side, I’ve found that 99% of the time the last sentence doesn’t actually give anything away.
I do the same. Less now that I have a Kindle (hard to just flip to the last page.) I need to know if the dog dies but also I like kind of knowing the last line and wondering how the plot is going to get there. Like 75% of the way through a book, I start thinking, “How can this develop so that it ends well with that last line…?” It kind of adds to my appreciation of the plot pacing or something? Especially with a really good book, I have never regretted reading the last line, it never gives anything away and it is always obscure enough to the rest of the plot that it is more intriguing than anything.
YOU ARE MY PEOPLE
I have never been this person, but I had to do this for the first time EVER with a book I just read because I was getting so anxious about whether the three main characters would survive that I did not think I could handle it if they didn’t.
I stand by my Kevin Conroy litmus test. Some writers pass, some don’t.
Curious: do you do this for the Bruce Wayne voice too? Or just the Batman voice?
Mostly I focus it on the interior monologue and dialogue for Batman. If I can’t imagine Kevin Conroy saying those pieces, well, sorry Tony Daniel.
This is exactly the kind of rigorous testing that needs to be applied to modern Batman-writing.
I like to read while walking to and from work. I feel like Belle in that opening song from Beauty and the Beast. Sadly, no one has thrown open their shutters and called “Bonjour!” to me yet.
Bound to happen some day though, right?
I haven’t given up hope yet!
I smell my books first. I swear you can tell how good a book is going to be by how it smells. I haven’t been wrong yet.
Ooh ooh me too! Sometimes, I just go through my bookshelf just smelling the books. It makes me feel like a total weird – definitely secret behavior. I underline too, but that’s not so odd.
Yes, exactly this. My boyfriend would agree even more enthusiastically. He’s obsessed with the olfactory merits of all paper objects.
When reading, I frequently tug at the hair on my inner left forearm with my lips. I don’t bite the hair, mind you — my lips curl around my teeth, and I use them to pull lightly at a few strands near my wrist. Sometimes it’s hard to concentrate if I don’t. And it’s only the left forearm, never the right.
This is in addition to more ordinary (ordinary?) tics-while-reading, like fussing with the hair on the back of my head and biting off bits of facial hair at the corners of my mouth.
I’ve also found that I can focus on a book or article best when in transit: on a train, bus, place, etc. Something about being in motion means fewer distractions for my brain.
OMG I never realized until this very moment that I do the exact same thing. Same arm, only further up because my arm hair isn’t long enough near the wrist. Why are we so weird?
THIS IS MY PLACE.
YOU ARE MY PEOPLE.
Reading in the shower! Childhood eating of books! I want to live here forever.
Both these things!! Man, I got so many talking-tos about eating my books, too. Maybe it’s like that article that came out about how we secretly want to eat babies? That’s how I feel about books.
I constantly need to know exactly how far I am from the end of a chapter, so I’ve always got a finger at the page that’s the end of the chapter, or else I feel NERVOUS.
One of the books I’m reading now is a Kindle version of a bio on the Bronte family. Great book so far, but it’s got “locations” instead of “page numbers” and that is driving me NUTS. Yes, obviously, “Location 2408 of 50,000” is pretty early on in the book but what does that MEAN, really?
This is something I actually love about reading e-books, because I get so anxious about how many pages there are left to work things out. The electronic format takes that away entirely, so I can let that part of my brain work on other irrational anxieties and the book is a series of delightful surprises.
Only I just noticed that the Kindle app tells me both what percentage of the way through I am and how many pages are left in the chapter. Which is great for figuring out where to stop when reading to the kid (thank you, Lemony Snicket, for your many, many 6-page chapters) but is not helpful for my regular, grown-self reading.
Short chapters didn’t help me with Lemony Snicket because I read nearly all those books in one sitting, as soon as I got them home from the bookstore. 🙂
And by that I mean one at a time, as they came out, not the entire series at once.
I read in the bathtub. I mean, obviously. Over the years, I’ve perfected the habit, keeping my right hand dry and turning pages with just my thumb, knowing when a thick book has reached the point of overbalancing and must be switched off for the back-up book waiting on the floor next to the tub.
But I must confess my grooming suffers a bit: stray hairs in the hollows of my right ankle and left armpit, less-enthusiastically soaped-up spots on the distant reaches of my right torso, little things like that. After I switched from contacts to glasses, it took me a while to figure out that leaving my glasses on while I lathered my shampoo one-handed meant that the portions of my scalp just under the earpieces were going unshampooed.
To sum up, I am vilely unclean and it is TOTALLY WORTH IT.
Unclean, but well-read. Fair trade.
In addition to being a reader of last sentences (or paragraphs, or even chapters), I am an inveterate ruiner of suspense. I basically can’t take it, so I almost always thumb forward to get the general outlines of what’s coming, and although many authors might hate th practice, I really think it helps me enjoy the book more because I’m not so distracted by anxiety. I also destroy my nails while reading (which made law school one long horror of cutical mutilation). Probably the weirdest thing I do, though, is read in kind of a spiral; on a two-page spread, I’ll read the top of the left-hand page, the top of the right-hand page, the bottom of the right-hand page, and then circle back and pick up any missing bits. I think this is probably indicative of some major deficiency, but at least my general level of compulsion means that I usually manage to review all the words at some point or another. . .
(And I also read for 75% of my hour-long foot commute in NYC. Basically I’m a failure of a grown up.)
OMG, someone else who hates suspense and ruins it for themselves! YES.
(I also spoil myself for movies.)
I don’t think I have any weird reading habits now (Unless – would you count “dog-earing pages in lieu of using a bookmark” and “throwing away dust jackets” as weird habits?), but as a kid – the radiators in the house were the kind that were short (say 4, 5 inches high) and ran all around the base of the wall. My favorite thing in winter was to wedge myself between my bed and the radiator and hang out with a stack of library books. I’d spend hours there, on the floor, under the bed.
Being under furniture is very comforting. I sometimes sit under the table if I’m feeling panicky.
I spent the majority of my childhood wedged between the radiator and the bed and I had completely forgotton about it until now. It was the most comforting feeling …
BRB need to go find a warm radiator.
I love reading while I eat. Love it. Sometimes, when I’m eating a favorite dish, I”ll try to pair it with a book that I find comforting or familiar. My mother always tolerated and chalked it up to my love of reading; she said she did the same thing when she was a kid. My aunt (her older sister) once warned me against it, because she worried that the mental distraction would somehow impede my digestion process.
At work, this is substituted with reading the internet during my meal breaks.
I DO THIS TOO. We are reading twinsies!
Yep, totally an eating-reader, except not anymore, really (damn parental responsibilities). When I was a kid (and, okay, in college), I almost exclusively read The Baby-Sitters Club during my meals. They’re comforting and I can pick up on any page and know exactly what’s happening, and put it down without NEEDING to know how it ends (because, duh, I already read it for the first time in 1993 or whatever).
I got this habit from my dad, who always reads Rex Stout/Nero Wolfe paperbacks when he eats. We don’t read when we’re eating as a family, but meals alone? You betcha.
(Um, I also grew up in Minnesota.)
There is always still a Rex Stout book on the kitchen table when I go to my parents’ house and it is so so comforting.
Of course Mike Dang didn’t have magazines in his house growing up. His family knew to listen to the grandmas.
I never actually *ate* the pages but I used to like to bite the bottom corner of the right page when the book was good. Just, like, leave a little damp crescent-shaped toothmark. I have broken myself of that habit but sometimes I find myself biting the corner of the renewal card in the New Yorker.
My cat does that, but I think it’s just because she wants my attention. 😉
“I’ll put my index finger under a page and put my thumb on the edge, and sort of fold it into a triangle and then slowly push the point back to the page’s edge. So it leaves these little creases, and sometimes tears, in the page. I do it all the time, but I have no idea what you call it.”
I do that too! I also have the disgusting habit of using the page corners to clean under my nails. It’s a wonder anyone ever wants to borrow books from me.
I do both of these things!! So nice to know I’m not completely alone… I <3 u toastie.
You should see the backs of my paperbacks from middle and high school, I would do that creasy thing to all of them. It’s terrible.
I trained myself out of this habit because I felt like I was hurting the books and felt badly about it, but between 6-15, the way I held paperback books and flipped the pages was to basically hold the rightmost pages back with my thumb and had my first and middle fingers holding the backcover on either side of my thumb, so when I released a page with my thumb to let it spring leftward on that tension, I inevitably made a triangular shaped crease in the back cover. Especially for books I re-read often, that back cover spot became a treacherous disaster of ripping and tearing.
And then I was ashamed that I was hurting my favorite books, because those dead tree compresses totally have feelings, okay?
Books at my parents’ home that are irreparably damaged by my love: the Black Stallion, All of a Kind Family, Sophie’s World (okay I’m SORRY I was a 15 year old and it BLEW MY MIND), amongst others.
We have three copies of Sophie’s World and I have not opened it since I was fifteen FOR FEAR.
If I’m at an exciting or tense part (near the end of a chapter, say), I have to literally cover the next paragraph/page with my hand so my eyes don’t skip forward involuntarily. Stupid willful eyes.
TWINS
TRIPLETS.
QUADRUPLETS!
Aaaand kinda embarrassing and mean to the books in question (feelings again! feelings of inanimate objects!) but I usually have three or four books going at one time that I like, and then another SLEEP BOOK, which is a book that I gradually read about six paragraphs at a time, because I pick it up when I want to fall asleep soon, and then twelve months later I’ve finished reading a book I never cared much about to begin with, and almost certainly have no idea what it was about.
I do this too! If I am particularly into one of the other books, I go to bed early and read it, and
the poor sleep book gets buried on my bedside table.
2 reading thing from when I was a kid: my family was constantly taking long (6 hours+) car trips and I was a reader, so I read in the car, in dim uneven light. During nighttime car trips, I would hold the book in my lap and when we’d be in tunnels or on a highway and the car would pass under a light for 5 seconds, I would pick up the book and hastily start scanning until we were plunged into darkness again. I’d do this for hours and I destroyed my vision.
Also, I grew up with large dogs that chewed up dolls and shoes and paperback books, so there were plenty of gnawed-on paperbacks with no corners in my house. I always thought “dog-eared” meant “dog-chewed.” Like, until I was 19.
I used to do the tunnel thing too! It’s amazing how much you can get read in the space of 3 second flickering orange tunnel light flashes! What am I saying, I still do this. My eyesight is the worst.
ME TOO. And when you got a car behind you with particularly good headlights you hold the book up to read in the air feeling really grateful.
Yes, I did this too! We lived in a rural area, and I remember waiting for the main roads that had street lights so I could read a word or two at a time. I also had to make sure my mum wouldn’t notice that I was reading.
Aaaaah, I thought I was the only freak in the world who did this. I remember so vividly trying to read in three-word snatches as we passed under the lights on the freeway. This is one of the reasons I’m so very enamored of being able to read on my phone, anywhere, even at night! I am not wedded to the dead-tree versions because the future is bringing reading to everywheres!
The Toast, bringing streetlight readers together.
I want to travel back in time and tell child Angharad to BRING A FLASHLIGHT! That’s what I did.
Also, I read magazines in the bath (so that if I drop it it’s not a giant loss) so pretty much every bath has 3-4 subscription cards floating around in the water after 10 minutes.
Yes yes yes Mallory I know exactly what you’re talking about and I used to do that too! It makes the pages so weird and wide that a 200 page book will be 3 inches thick by the end of it. I stopped doing that eventually though because I hated the way it fucked up the books. But it felt so soothing!
The day I figured out I could put a Kindle into a plastic zip-up bag and have a legitimately waterproof bath book was a very happy day.
OMG you may have just changed my life.
I know what I’m doing tonight!
ditto, but since i got a paperwhite, the touch sensitivity isn’t ideal through the plastic. so i put my iphone in a small ziploc and read via the kindle app. in the shower, in the bath, whatever. touch sensitivity still works just fine.
I saran-wrap the bottom of mine where it’s cracked.
WHAT. Where were you on the useful things to know post???
I WAS DISTRACTED BY AVOCADOS 🙁
I’ve always read text upside down & from right to left. I like the challenge & always found it easier to concentrate that way.
I can’t do exercise without a book in front of my face. Exercise just because it’s exercise is so BORING you know? so i have my recumbent bicycle with a book stand I built to cover the time/distance/blablablah meter. When I walk around the block (which is almost never because my neighborhood is so suburban and bland it makes me sick) I have to have a book in hand. It means I don’t really exercise-walk so much as saunter, keeping an eye out at every page-turn for stray dog poop or sidewalk cracks.
I also take books or a kindle with me when I go to Disney World. It’s true. When I’m tired of walking around, I plop down on a bench and open my book and read to the sound of Disney bgm and kids screeching. It’s surprisingly relaxing and fun, especially since I’m fairly local, so I go as much for the atmosphere and whatnot as the attractions.
I do audiobooks or podcasts while I exercise. It’s definitely too boring on its own (Though I guess Nicole is on a campaign to get at least some of us to enjoy workouts?) and listening to music isn’t enough of a distraction – I wind up focusing on just how miserable I am at that particular moment. I can’t do any actual reading, though – tried it once while on the elliptical thing once, though, and nearly fell off. I’m just not coordinated enough.
I used to read every day while I walked home from elementary school, until an adult exhibitionist scandalized a handful of school patrols (myself included) by slowly rolling by and/or stopping in front of our patrol corners, and making sure we noticed he had not a speck of clothing on below the waist.
The following week, the school sent home flyers with every kid that we must be vigilant while walking home from that day on. I got a stern talking-to about “NO MORE BOOKS WHILE WALKING BECAUSE OF SAFETY REASONS!” Unfortunately, without the literary distraction, my walks home were filled with terror: I jumped every time a car passed and shied away from those parked on the side of the road, fearing another assault on my impressionable young eyeballs.
I was a walker through high school and I read while I walked too! I got yelled at by so many of my neighbors because I would weave right off the sidewalk and step into traffic without noticing.
I also used to read while doing anything boring, like getting ready for ballet class or packing my backpack for school or whatever. I figured out which knickknacks in my room would prop open what sized book and basically read bent over while I puttered around my room.
Also also, my mother claims that I ruined my eyesight by reading with a flashlight under the covers as a child. Oh well, it was so worth it.
I LOVE EVERYBODY IN THIS THREAD.
I used to read in the shower when I was younger, but haven’t done it recently. Also now I read a lot of Kindle books so I don’t think that would work out well.
I am also a very fast reader and accidental skip-ahead-er, so I also cover the bottom of the page during exciting parts. I have never met anyone else who does this, so I am super excited that several others of you do! MY PEOPLE.
So many to mention. Perhaps my darkest time was pretty early on (9-12) when I would find as many Armada Paperbacks in the library or at car boot sales or in my grandmother’s house as I could and retire to my room which armfuls of them, and a bowl full of oranges. I would cut the oranges in half and kind of slurp on them while reading Mallory Towers and St. Claire’s, and The Naughtiest Girl in the School, and What Katy Did, and the Chalet Girls series. I would do this for hours, and my face and hands would turn completely orange. I regret nothing.
This is the origin story for the heroine in a YA book I really want to read.
ME TOO. Oh, me too, exactly this. Internet twin.
This is just like Jo in Little Women, except she had a huge pile of apples to eat while she read. You are both awesome!
I used to read under a blanket with a flashlight at night. I think it started because my sister and I shared a room? But I kept doing it after she got her own?
I also very vividly remember my 5th grade English teacher trying to get us to read books through colored sheets of cellophane. It was supposed to improve retention and comprehension or something? It didn’t catch on.
I re-read James Herriot (all of ’em) every year, and I have to listen to Tupac while doing it. It all stems from staying up until 4am as a preteen, reading James Herriot and listening to the hip hop station. They would play big blocks of Tupac at 2am, and now it seems impossible to do one without the other.
I like reading in a supine position more than anything. I am a lounging sprawler by nature. I also need tea or some other beverage to sip on. And I have been known to cancel plans with friends because I’m reading a really good book and would rather read than socialize.
I have made plans with friends to sprawl on the couch with tea and read. It’s the best way of being friends. When you just want to read, but also want some company, but maybe not really socializing company. My bff is like “you need to rent the apartment below mine so we can do this all the time” and it’s true. Having to drive/bike 16 miles just to read books in the same room is annoying.
That sounds like the perfect friend hangout.
Yessssss, that is the best way to socialize. My cousin and I used to do that when we’d see each other during summers growing up – we’d meet, hug, talk loudly and excitedly for ten minutes, and then silence would descend as we squashed ourselves and our books into the loveseat in my grandmother’s living room.
I pretty much only start books when I know I can finish them without stopping. Not always– some books I read over several days– but the issue is that usually even if I THINK I can put a book down, if it’s good enough I won’t, and then it’ll be 6AM and I’ll have to be at work or on a bus or something and I will deeply regret everything.
This means I read less books these days, because I hardly ever have time to read one cover to cover. Instead, I end up reading fanfiction, which is short enough usually that I know I can read one or two and still get to bed on time!
I’m pretty sure half of my graduating class expected me to die from falling down the stairs while reading a book with my shoelaces untied.
I’ve read the same three books over and over in a cycle for almost four years now! I try to read new ones, but remember I like one of my three usuals better, and start over again (the three are One Hundred Years of Solitude, Shalimar the Clown and The God of Small Things. Magical realism is my shit.)
I really miss other books 🙁
May I recommend Italo Calvino? Especially If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler. We have similar magical realism tastes, and Calvino plays right in. (I’m also obsessed with Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay)
I will put Shalimar and The God of Small Things on my to-read lists…
I have to put lotion on my hands before I read a book. The feeling of dry skin on dry book paper is horrible, horrible. I also absentmindedly run the edges of pages under my nails. Which is disgusting, really, if my nails are dirty at all. Sorry, books.
My weird book habits mostly speak to a larger general category of neuroses I have about my hands and nails. It makes it hard to read books! If something makes my hands or nails ~feel weird~, I freak out and have to like…”erase” the feeling by scratching or rubbing them until I can’t feel the weirdness anymore. I constantly run my nails under my other nails and pick at my cuticles. I’m doing it right now! I hate feeling like my nails and skin are mashing together. If anyone mashes down on my nailbed I will SLAP them. I DON’T KNOW GUYS. Anyone else?? Ha ha…???????
I totally use books to clean my nails and I’m not even ashamed. Although when I started reading this post, I was all, “That’s so weird! I don’t do anything— Oh.”
For me, dry skin on book paper is almost, but not quite, like The Worst Thing In The World, which is flour on paper. Even thinking of it makes me feel very sick. Flour on paper. Tiny, tiny grains, making that rasping sound. LOTION BEFORE BOOKS OR GLOVES MAYBE.
The way you feel when you think about flour on paper is the way I feel when I think about someone rubbing a balloon. Which has nothing to do with this thread, but omg, I’m glad someone else has a weird sensory thing that makes them feel sick just when THINKING about it.
When I was a camp counselor we had to do a training excercise where the whole group of us each had a balloon and something something I don’t know the rest because I legitimately had to leave the room.
My children will have a tragic, barren, balloon-less existence, and I do not even care.
Weird sensory things! I just..I can’t. I can’t. Surely everyone can see that flour on paper is The Worst Thing Of All The Things? It does make baking tricky, because bags of flour, and also, flour on wood for rolling out pastry. I would like a Mad Girl’s Cookbook, a la Plath, that explained how to do this sort of thing.
I have a friend who’s like that with crumpling paper towels into a tight ball.
I have a lot of weird sensory things myself, but I’m not going to mention any of them because it’s Monday morning and I don’t want to think about unpleasant things.
ME! I too get the weird hand feeling. OMG a fellow sufferer. I read your post with my toes curling and my hands clenched. I had a temp job that involved counting paper and a lot of moisturiser was used that summer. A kindle has solved lots of my weird book sensory things!
To everyone who reads while walking, standing, stretching, leg-shaking, or otherwise moving: GO TEAM! I wasn’t much of a reader as a kid. I thought it was because I found books boring, but really I just couldn’t sit still. Once I figured out that I could walk around the dining room table and read at the same time… fast-forward to a phd program in very long Victorian novels. (Note: it took me way too long to have the same realization about writing. I spent years trying to make myself “just sit down and write my f-ing dissertation.” But it didn’t really happen until I put my computer on the kitchen counter, thought thoughts while walking the dining-room-table route again, and then wrote standing up.)
I used to steal chips from my Dad’s chip stash and hide them in my room and read all afternoon and eat chips.
I also used to be really crazy about people treating my books like crap in any way, because I didn’t have a lot of money, so what little money I had was spent on books. So basically if I lent you one and you wrecked it, DEAD TO ME.
This is why I a) rarely lend books, and/or b) have specific Lending Only copies of books I really like. Because no, you are not borrowing my nice hardback of The Hunger Games. Or, as I mentioned upthread, ANY of my copies of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.
If I DO lend someone a hardcover, they will get it without a dustjacket, because they will inevitably fuck it up and then I will be pissed and the book will have lost value.
…I am the daughter of a bookseller and collector. It it not always healthy.
MY PEOPLE. I’m crazy about keeping my books nice, too. I rarely lend them to people, but when I do and it’s a hardcover, I also remove the dustjacket. Not because it decreases the value, but because I like to keep my things pristine whenever possible.
Other pet peeves: cracking binding, creased pages, dog-eared corners, curled paperback covers. Also, when people write on a piece of paper with the book underneath, leaving an imprint of the writing in the cover. Also also, dirty smudges on the pages and debris in between them.
Basically, just don’t ever touch my stuff (unless you are Megano! or roxythroatpunch).
I like to read and walk at the same time. As long as I’m on a pretty straightforward trajectory and I know the route well enough to be sure I’m not going to walk into a post or pothole, it’s good. (Except for one time when some asshole neighbor put their trash can out early.)
One of my favorite reading-while-walking moments ever: I was walking back from the university gym–reading my book, naturally–and a middle-aged man on a bike overtook me. As he came up behind me (partly to alert me to his presence, I think), he called out, “Reading a text message?” Then he saw I had my nose in a book and corrected himself: “Ah, a real text!” I grinned.
I always have 3 books going at once: one kept in the car, one for the bathroom, and the main book.
I suffer from Vicarious Embarrassment Syndrome, and if the main character is in a very awkward situation, I’ll feel so bad for them I sometimes have to set the book down for a few minutes until I’m more emotionally prepared (same thing with movies, I’ll have to look away until they get out of whatever situation they’re in).
I’ll often read the last line/paragraph of the book, usually while I’m still reading the first chapter. And I insist on reading the introduction to classic books first, even though I know they always give away the entire plot. I also unrepentantly seek out the endings to movies or tv shows before I’ve watched them. Sometimes you have to know if you’re in the mood for that kind of ending.
And I get unreasonably irritated by a book which doesn’t have frequent stopping places, like sentence endings at the bottom of a page or frequent chapter/paragraph breaks, and so it’ll have several pages without any convenient stopping point. Like irritated enough I want to write letters to whoever designed the layout.
I don’t lend books. Sometimes I buy extra copies of my favorite books when I spot them at the thrift store, because I want to be able to give them out generously but I know in my miserly heart that I will resent never getting back my one-and-only copy.
This way, I can say I’m “lending” it but in my pinching little mind, I’m giving it; if I ever get the duplicate back, it’s a lovely surprise instead of a begrudging “fiiiiiinally.”
That’s right: I devote money and shelf space to decoy books, to keep you from taking my favorite book.
Yep, this right here.
I once lent my single copy of Kavalier and Clay to someone and still haven’t received it back, years later. I am so annoyed because I can’t find any thrift copies!!!! >:(
oh OH, i have a weird one. i chew or suck on my hair when i read, and i’m blonde so it turns that hair tip sort of yellowish see-through. then what i do (what i catch myself doing) is running the hair tip over the line that i’m reading like a place-holder/highlighter. yep yep.
When I was a kid I used to lie on my stomach on the bed with my head and arms hanging over the side and put an open book on the floor and read that way. And I would DROOL on the book while I read it. I have no idea why/when this started or stopped, but I definitely took crunchy drool books back to the library afterward. Sorry library patrons! As an adult, I confessed this in a blog post and a friend of mine said she’d done the same thing and refers to it as “primal reading.”
These are awesome. My idiosyncrasy is the “reading sprawl” in which I place the book on the floor and drape myself gracefully (ungracefully) over the edge of bed/couch to read. I have fallen off before. It was worse when I was younger and slept on the top bunk.
I once read a book so deeply that I missed my metro stop,went ten miles out of the way and was almost late picking up my son from school. I resolved to stop reading on the Metro at least two stops before mine, to keep it from happening again. I like to read historical romances while waiting in hospitals for tests, and cookbooks in bed. I read the best parts aloud to my husband; he appreciates horribly written sex scenes.
The weirdest thing I did as a kid when reading, probably, was use the pages as a blotter for my oily nose and forehead. Sometimes when I pick up old YA books at my mom’s house I still find those marks. I sometimes still find myself picking at dead skin on my face or fiddling with my ears when reading. These are both gross so I will say a cute one too: I used to pick a favorite character and I would read ONLY their lines aloud. Like, I’d limit myself to being that character in the movie version in my head. The first time I read Lord of the Rings, I was Legolas because I thought he could have easily been a girl. When Eowyn showed up, though, I totes cheated and started reading for her as well.
I thought Leogolas was the next best thing to a girl too! I always picked one character to identify with in each book I read and I had to pick him in LOTR because of lack of choices (I think I was too young to make it through The Two Towers the first time I read them so I didn’t get to Eowyn…).
The one thing I would change about myself if I could would be my motion sickness. So much wasted time on buses and road trips all because if I read for more than a few minutes I’ll hurl, or just feel like it for the rest of the day.
Also pretty proud of myself because I’ve managed to finish 3 half started books so far this summer that have been on my shelf for about a year.
I don’t know when I stopped, but I definitely ate the paper from my books. Some of my beloved Enid Blytons have the bottom corner torn and eaten from every page. And it looks like I must have chewed on the hard cover as well.
I can’t stop trying to read while I cook, and consequently my books all have weird juice or oil stains. It’s only a matter of time before I melt my Kindle…
I also have a habit of reading ridiculously huge books (i.e. The Power Broker, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders) and lugging them around with me even though it hurts my back. It’s kind of pretentious but I get a lot of compliments/ice broken.
When I was a kid I used to crack the spines of paperback books to prop them open easier… I felt kind of ashamed about destroying books but it was addictive and they were mostly just Babysitters Club books anyway.
This isn’t exactly relevant, but I live in a country where not very many people read and I desperately miss talking to people who love reading so much they have distinctive habits…
You can’t find readers in an ENTIRE COUNTRY? Like, their country is just… not into reading? How can this be?!?!?! What country is this?
It’s Brazil… I’m sure there are readers here but I haven’t found them yet, aside from one awesome friend. I’ve never seen anyone reading in public or heard people talking about books. I think it’s partly because books are really expensive here and partly because there hasn’t been a significant literary culture here for a long time (i.e. the Brazilian classics are from a really long time ago).
But this is just coming from my limited experience of one city!
I chew the corners of books, can’t read outside my house generally, and if I do, I can’t have people in my peripheral vision. I’ll very briefly skim the last page or sentence so I don’t feel too guilty, and I hate holding books with two hands. Instead, I’ll hold it down with my knee, elbow, head, pillow, jutting belly, whatever, anything but both hands.
just wanted to express my support for re-reading Dune.
I once missed getting off the bus at my elementary school because I was so deep into a book and didn’t notice that the bus had gotten there, dropped off my friends (“friends”) and neighbors, and gone on to another school. The bus driver had to yell to get my attention when she got to the last school and the bus emptied of all the other children, whereupon we both realized I’d missed my stop, and she had to double back along her route to drop me off.
Also in elementary school, I was reading on my walk home from the bus stop and I walked right into a stop sign.
Also in elementary school, when I was fighting with my friends (“friends”) and wouldn’t have anyone to talk to during lunch, I would bring my current book to lunch with me to read while I ate. All the other sad, friendless kids started bringing their own books to lunch, and that (along with a published essay, also in elementary school, about the elephant seals of Año Nuevo) is, I’m pretty sure, going to be my only lasting claim to fame: that I once set a trend for not staring vacuously at the wall while eating.
Basically elementary school was not a good time for me.
When I was in high school I would skip classes and walk (about 2 miles) to the public library where I would read (over a course of days) young adult coming of age novels with gay male protagonists. To be clear, I would not check them out of the library (I had a library card) and read them during actual free time. Also I often tried to look for make-out scenes first and then usually ended up reading the entire book because that was easier than skimming for make-out scenes.
Mallory, I totally do the index finger/thumb triangle edge push thing! But I’ve stopped doing it with books, just magazines–the paper tears more easily, but I care less about the harm done.
For my entire childhood, I’d hold my mom’s arm while we walked places, so she could steer me while I kept my nose buried in my book. I keep trying to convince my fella to do this for me now, but he is reluctant.
Another confession of a shower-reader, here.
When I was a kid it was easy – there was a towel bar at the back of the tub/shower combo that was the perfect height and the perfect grip (when holding a towel) to hold a hardback book open.
Now with a narrower stall-type shower, I just have to use the rotating hands held above my head technique.
Late to the thread, but apparently nobody I know (including book club) would read books in the shower as a kid except for me, so thank you for that alone. (The Belgariad and the Mallorean are still shower books in my old age.) Protip: keep a dryish towel nearby and when you have cleaned and shaved everything except your right arm and armpit, put the book down briefly, wash and shave and dry off the hand, and you can finish rinsing conditioner out of your hair (yes, conditioner is an excuse to read longer in the shower). I also pretend that holding a book with one hand and using the pinkie to turn pages in the shower improves hand dexterity, because lying to myself = A+++
Also, I am allowed to continue reading a book after BF initiates sexytimes, although it doesn’t last long because: distracting. He is maybe a special case and rather accommodating.
Aaaaah I am so late to this party, but tiredness generally does not mean that I will stop reading and get some sleep. I have to read every night before bed and when I am so tired I literally can’t keep my eyes open anymore, I just close one eye. And continue to read with one eye open. And when that eye is tired, I swap. This ekes out an extra hour of reading time most nights, and while many people are supremely and irrationally annoyed but it, I think I’m charming.
Nicole Cliffe I used to do that eating paper thing too! I kept it an absolute secret for *years* because I was so ashamed. My mum once mentioned it to a friend’s mum and I was so annoyed I stomped up the stairs in my friend’s house, to my friend’s bedroom! And you mentioning it made me think about all my weird food habits and inspired me to write my very first blog post EVER about them! And it is here if anyone is interested: http://sinandcynicism.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/th… , although it is probably not very good since it’s my first one, and also it’s quite rude to publicise yourself on someone else’s article. But you inspired me!
Sometimes when I’m in a odd mood and/or in the mood for a specific kind of ending, I like to read books backwards. As in, I’ll start with the last chapter and work my way to the first. It presents an interesting read at times, because I wonder “how the hell did they get in this situation?”
Good times.
NICOLE oh my GOD I used to eat books too! I’d tear off all the margins and eat the paper, and then after a while I started picking off the wallpaper beside my bed and eating that too while reading, and I ate so much of the wallpaper that my parents got peeved and painted my bedroom, and I threw a little-kid hissy fit because they painted it yellow and I did not want yellow. But yes, the eating books thing. My mother thought it was a huge joke and would tell her friends “Mari literally devours books”, but she thought all my chewed books were disgusting and would not touch them.