Top Ten Book Related Problems I Have

All right, this one's going to be fun! This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt (click here to learn more about Top Ten Tuesdays over at The Broke and the Bookish) is book-related problems. Let's be honest, we all have them. Maybe you even have some of the same problems I do:

1. Constantly losing bookmarks - And when I say constantly, I mean constantly. I swear, those things just sort of evaporate! Then I wind up grabbing something random to hold my place, and half the time it's something weird. I'm not the only person who uses squares of toilet paper as bookmarks . . . right?

2. Staying up late to finish a book - Yep, as you can see by the name of my blog I have a very, very hard time putting a book down at night. I don't often wind up staying up till dawn (luckily I'm a fast enough reader that I usually finish the book before then), but I definitely stay up past my bedtime immersed in a totally different world. Then when it's time to start my life in the real world the next morning, I am shot. My eyes are red (from exhaustion and possibly tears, depending on the book), my energy level is nill, and it takes all the restraint I have not to crawl back in bed and shut out the world until lunch time.

3. My free time goes down a black hole - Oh, look, I have three hours of uninterupted free time. Yay! I'll just start by reading for a few minutes . . . three hours later: *putting the book down* Oh, no! My free time is over, and it only felt like I was relaxing for half an hour! *looks at books and sighs*

4. Sobbing and getting weird looks from family - Sad books make me look like I'm having a meltdown. My dad and I were alone one weekend right after Christmas and I decided to reread Love, Aubrey (one of the best, and saddest, books I've ever read). Halfway through the book I came down for lunch and had to explain that no, nobody had died. At least, not in real life. Then, as I started to explain the book's to him I started choking up and I had to turn away to hide my tears, and I swear he spent the rest of lunch shooting me worried looks out of the corner of his eyes. No, Dad, I'm not psycho! I'm just emotionally invested, okay?

5. Running out of shelf space, choosing what to get rid of - Yes, I know what you're going to say: "just get another bookshelf! Don't sacrifice your babies!" But what's a girl supposed to do when she shares a room with her sister the hoarder, and doesn't have enough floor space for another bookshelf? Well, what this one does is she "donates" her less-loved darlings to her younger siblings who, let's face it, don't even want them. But the process of sorting through the books is nothing less than wrenching.

6. To lend books to friends or not? - NOT! But then, I don't want to come across as being all clingy, or make them think I don't trust them with my books. But I also kind of . . . don't trust them with my books. One time I lent a girl one of my books, and she didn't give it back for almost a year because she kept leaving it at her mom's house! So what I usually do nowadays is foist it off on my parents: "No, I don't think I can lend that to you. My parents don't like me lending books out." Ha, as if they'd really care if the number of books in my bedroom decreased by one.

7. What do I do with a book I bought and then really didn't like? - I just spent real money buying this thing, which means I thought it was going to be good. I invested in it, and it let me down big time. I hate it! I never want to read it again! But what am I supposed to do with it? Let it sit on my bookshelf sucking up space, just because I don't want to admit I threw that money down the toilet? Give away or donate the book, and lose the money I spent on that book forever? What if I decide I want to re-read it someday (even though I swear it will never happen because it was so bad!), but can't because I gave it away? What do I do??

8. ebooks. I hate them, but they're so convenient! -  There's something . . . personal about holding a real, physical book with words printed on it that tell a story. The words on the book's pages will never change. Everyone before and after me who looks at those pages will read the exact same words that I read, made with the same ink on the same paper particles. With an ebook, everything is so computerized and impersonal and ever-changing that I have a hard time getting absorbed in books. But then again, I could read so many books in ebook form that I couldn't in physical! For example, my library has only one physical copy of the fourth City of Ember book, The Diamond of Darkhold, but a bunch of ecopies. I've been waiting for almost two weeks now for some hoarder to turn in the physical copy so I can get my hands on it, but I could have already finished it by now if I'd checked it out on my iPad app. Oh, the tragedy of modern technology.

9. Buy the hardback and read it, or wait until the paperback comes out - Okay, so we've all had this problem. A book is coming out that you absolutely know is going to be phenomenal. Maybe it's by your favorite author, part of a great series, or has just been so highly reviewed by people you trust that you know you have to get it. You know you'll probably wind up owning the book eventually, because it's guaranteed to be amazing, but there's a big difference in price between the price of a hardback and a paperback. Do you wait and wait until you can get your hands on a free copy from your very pokey library, then buy it when it comes out on paperback, or do you snap up the hardback right away? I am one of the most impatient people I know when it comes to books, so after a few days of nail-biting and fretting, I usually wind up buying the hardback. If I'm really good, sometimes I can even get my mom to take me to Barnes and Noble on its release date so I can get it the day it comes out! But this is still a money-drain that sometimes makes me feel guilty. I mean, I could buy like three more paperbacks with the money I would have saved in 2014 if I'd waited for paperbacks. What's an impatient bookie supposed to do?

10. No one knows what to get me as a present - I literally had about sixty dollars in Barnes and Noble gift cards by the end of 2014. Don't get me wrong, I love being able to go to the store and pick out whatever I want! I got a couple of great CDs and some of my all-time favorite books with the gift cards, with about twenty dollars left over, and it was pretty awesome. But every now and then I wish people could read my mind and know exactly what book would make my day - it's more personalized, you know? Yes, I realize this is unrealistic, so I'm okay with this problem never going away. I really love my friends and family for giving me the ability to buy any book I want, because it means that they know me well enough to know this is what I want. Also, because books!

So how about you, what are your biggest book related problems? Do you have any of the problems I do, and if so what's your way of dealing with them?