27 Tell-Tale Signs That You Are a Bookworm

#8 — Whenever you get a gift that isn’t a book, you’re a little disappointed, no matter how thoughtful it is

We can be a secretive and solitary bunch, we bookworms. We like to live inside our books — at times more than we bother to live outside of them. But many things connect us, even when we are off reading separately.

Here are a few of the most enduring (and endearing) so we can better know ourselves, laugh at our selves, and love our selves.

1. The Clothes in Your Closet

are in various stages of disrepair, but your TBR pile has now extended out onto a second (or third, or fourth) bookshelf. I mean, if you suddenly lost your job or otherwise ran out of money, you want to make sure you have a good backlog, right?

2. You Start Every Other Conversation

with, “So the other day I was reading this amazing book . . .”

3. You Regularly Cancel Plans with Friends

claiming sickness or exhaustion, but the real reason is you can’t wait to get back to that book that you’ve been thinking about all day. What’s going to happen next? Will the hero escape from the sinister plot? Will the heroine rescue her family? You can always catch up with your friend next week, once you’ve finished this book. Or maybe the week after, because you’ve been really, really wanting to start that other one . . .

4. You Are Genuinely Puzzled

by people who say there is nothing to do.

5. You Wish You “Had Nothing To Do”

so that you could read books until your eyes start to water and your head starts to droop, and you finally have to admit that it’s time to go to bed.

6. You Go to a Party

and within minutes, you’re in a corner looking at the bookcase. The people there are probably fun and interesting, but the books are so much more so. Which books are there that you love? That are on your TBR? What’s there that you’ve never heard of but is instantly appealing? Oooooo you’ve heard such good things about that one! I wonder if the host has read it yet and what they think . . .

7. When You Think About the Perfect Night

with a lover, it involves cosying up on the couch or in bed with a book. Or reading to each other. Or talking about your favourite books.

8. Whenever You Get a Gift That Isn’t a Book

you’re a little disappointed, no matter how thoughtful it is.

9. When You Walk Into the Local Bookseller

the clerk greets you by name, a thrilled smile on their face, and a stack of pre-ordered books. (Even though you were just there last week.)

10. You Enjoy Moving

because then you can unpack your books, and it’s like getting them all over again.

11. You Hate Moving

because 50 boxes of books later, you’re not even done.

12. You Wait Patiently for Your Friend

to finish talking about their relationship woes. You offer a sufficient amount of sympathy and consolation. You then launch into a ten-minute discussion of the wonders of the book you’ve been reading the last few days and why it’s exactly what they might need to read to escape/endure/overcome their current tribulations.

13. Your Favourite Days

are when you get a new book.

14. Your Second Favourite Days

are when people ask you for book recommendations.

15. The Only Thing That Stops You

from buying more books is the certain knowledge that at some point you will have to dust them all.

16. You Don’t Consider Yourself a Morbid Person

, but you secretly fear that one day your bookshelves will fall on you, trapping you beneath hundreds of pounds of books. You won’t be discovered for days because everyone will assume you were too busy reading to return their texts.

17. You Believe You Can Tell More About a Person

by what they read than what they say. We all know that people can lie. They can leave out key information. They show you only what they want you to see. But the books they read and talk about and love? That is an infallible way to know something about the deepest and truest depths of their soul.

18. You Look Forward to the Weekend

when you’ll finally have enough time to reorganize your bookshelf.

19. You Launch Into a Story

about a totally crazy thing that happened to you this one time, only to realize after a minute or two that you’re actually describing a book you read a few years ago. You carry on without missing a beat and hope that your friend doesn’t recognize your accidental plagiarism. If you read about it, it’s basically the same thing as if it happened to you in real life anyway.

20. You Pull Out Your Phone to Show Pictures

of your kid/cat /new car, and you need to scroll through dozens (hundreds?) of books before finding the one you are looking for.

21. You Finally Sit Down to Read

that book you’ve been daydreaming about for hours and remember that you haven’t talked to a good friend in ages. So you take a quick book-selfy and text it to them in the hopes that it satisfies your friendship obligations for the moment. Then you can keep reading with next-to-no interruptions.

22. You Buy a Book by a Favourite Author

and bring it home only to find that you already have it. In fact, you’ve read it twice.

23. You Tend to Forget Birthdays

but you can still recount down to the smallest detail that life-changing book you read when you were 14. You know, the one that made you realize you are genuine, at-the-bottom-of-your-heart different from all those non-bookworms.

24. You Hate Lemons

because you almost always have a paper cut somewhere on your hands.

25. The Worst Thing Your Ex Ever Did to You

was steal some of your favourite books when you broke up. They were a lying, cheating, abusive monster — but some things are absolutely unforgivable.

26. When Your Mom Asks,

“Don’t you think you have enough books, honey?” you begin to wonder whether you were secretly adopted or switched at birth. We all know it happens, right?

27. Your Life Feels Like It Is in Shambles

but instead of fixing the problems or drowning your sorrows, you pick up your favourite book for the umpteenth time and fall into a world that feels familiar and safe and perfect. The problems are real but solvable. The characters are now friends, oddballs with whom you can relate. The villains are easy to identify and always conquered in the end.

I’ve been a bookworm for as long as I can remember.

Sometimes books feel like my family. Sometimes I want to climb inside the perfect book and never come out. Books one of the most powerful ways we can connect with total strangers and also to our deepest and most difficult-to-find selves.

What would we do in a world without books?