I know what you’re thinking: oh my gosh! Is she doing a numbered list!?!! Yes. I am. I’ve done it before – and I have no regrets. And also JOKES ON YOU. I didn’t number the reasons so HA! You’ll never know if reason one is actually number seven.
Bad Decisions Will Be Your New Aesthetic
(Not ‘anaesthetic’. This is a different thing. I’ve never made this mistake. *cough*)
And by ‘aesthetic’ I mean you will have huge rings under your eyes. Because you’ve been staying up reading until one, two, or three o’clock in the morning. ‘Just one more chapter …’ will be your death knell.
You hate it, but you know you love it too.
You Will Have A Vast Vocabulary But Can’t Pronounce Any Of It
I can’t pronounce anything. There!I said it! Who knew that ‘dexterous’ rhymes with ‘mysterious’? No one. No one knew. Because no one pronounces it like that. Apart from you.
You’ll crack out a new word that you are pre-t-ty sure will BLOW EVERYONE’S MINDS BECAUSE IT IS SO APT TO THE SITUATION and crickets chirp. Because no one has a clue about which word you’re using.
You Will Have No Space
Charity shops and Amazon and bookshops and just … you’re doomed, okay? Accept it. There’s no way out.
Fact: you will run out of bookshelves.
Fact: you will have to stack books on the floor.
Fact: you don’t regret a thing.
You Will be Frustrated (You Can’t Resurrect Dead Authors. Neither Can You Make Live Authors Write Faster)
Lots of my favourite authors are dead. Georgette Heyer, I’m looking at you.Also, the ones who are alive write. So. Slowly.
The frustration is real and terrible, my friends.
Your Bank Account Will Hate You
…
Kindle is evil and Waterstones is worse. That is all I have to say about that.
Packing Will Be A Nightmare
Packing for a trip. Fun, huh? Some people agonise about which outfits they want to take. Should I take this dress or should I stick with t-shirt and jeans and maybe another pair of jeans and another t-shirt? You … might do the same. But choosing which books to take is far, far worse. ‘What ifs’ haunt me and suddenly I’ve blinked and there’s seventy books in a pile and what if I need a Complete History of Medicine? Huh? WHAT IF I NEED IT???
The tragedy is … you’ll probably end up reading a book on your kindle.
Your books are well-travelled though. That’s a plus.
Movies Will Never Be The Same
If you’ve read a ton of books, you’ll have become an expert. You know exactly what is going to follow what, when the dramatic moment when all hope is lost and ahhhh they’ve taken the Hobbits to Isengard!!! and – best of all – when everything will pick up and either a) the characters will die, b) the bad guy will get what’s coming to him and c) when the heroine realises that perhaps the hero wasn’t so bad after all.
Or something like that.
(I have no idea if the taking of the Hobbits to Isengard was the beginning of Act Three or not. I haven’t read Lord of The Rings. *GASP* I know! Can you even trust me???!!)
My point is: if you’ve read loads of book, you’ll have cracked the story code. And only the Very Badly Made or Very Brilliant Movies will surprise you.
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Anything to add? What about the unrealistic expectations books give you – dead bodies, handsome heroes just everywhere basically, world portals though pieces of furniture etc etc etc … ?
of words & books 