Hey, another tag! I came across this one at Kelly’s blog, Another Book in the Wall (I can’t tell you how much I love her blog name–it’s perfection really.) Her blog is really great and if you’re not already following her you should check it out!

Ok, so yes, I do have a few bad reading habits (don’t we all?) but some of them I’m already trying to address. Others….well, I don’t think some of them will ever improve because I enjoy some of my bad habits too much. 😉

Bad Habit #1 – My Ever Growing To Be Read Mountain 

Look, I love books. We all love books or else we wouldn’t be here, right? But let’s be honest, I’ve long had a dream of having so many books that I could just pile them up and jump into them like Scrooge McDuck does with his vault of gold coins. And, with over 2000 books, I may be there, but I’m pretty sure diving into a pile of books would A) hurt and B) damage my books.

Anyway, I can’t help but always acquire a ton of books. I see people reading books, recommending books, and I check them out and think ‘I might like that, I should look for it’ and then I find it somewhere and next thing you know it’s coming home with me. Used book store binges, regular book store binges, buying a book here and there and they just pile up. I don’t even know how long my TBR pile is at this point! But, hundreds. Whoops! I probably won’t stop though, I just love being surrounded by books and won’t be happy until my house looks like one of those used book stores that has books just piled up everywhere because they ran out of shelf space.

Bad Habit #2 – Too Many Unfinished Series

A long time ago, before I joined any bookish communities on the internet and discovered so many new books, I used to start reading a series and just stick with it until the end. Then I was like ‘you mean there are more books that I’ve never heard of???’ and I started reading a book from a series here, a book from another series there…and before you know it, I have something like 90-some series that I’ve started and never finished.

It’s gotten kind of ridiculous. Now, some of those series I may actually never finish. But I do have this thing where I kind of want to try and finish every series I start. This is something I’m actively working on this year as one of my reading goals. So far, 40% of the books I’ve read have been on my list of series to catch up on so I’m working my way through some things finally! Although, it doesn’t help that I’ve also started a ton of new series but at least most of them don’t have sequels out…yet. 😀

Bad Habit #3 – Tuning Out Audiobooks

A little before two years ago I hardly read any audiobooks and that’s because I have a really tough time tuning into them. A long time ago I learned to tune out auditory distractions while I was reading, and now having to read by listening…it takes a lot of concentration for me unless the narration is super engaging. Learning how to listen to books has changed my life but I still find myself zoning out sometimes, my mind wandering, not know where the heck I stopped listening to the book. Whoops! The bad habit part is that sometimes I think ‘maybe I didn’t miss too much important’ and just keep going. O.o

Most of the time it’s not too hard to figure out what I missed from context and I’m fine but sometimes I get really lost. I do end up rewinding a lot but if it’s a book I don’t care as much about…eh. I’ll just keep going. Tl;dr – I’m terrible.

Bad Habit #4 – Sometimes I Dog-ear Pages

I don’t really have a good excuse for this one. I always have bookmarks around. Tons of them. And if I can’t find a bookmark then I can usually find a piece of random paper or a receipt or something. But sometimes when I’m reading paperbacks I just get lazy and dog-ear the pages to mark my place. I only do this with my own books, but I know it’s still bad. Ugh, I’m the worst.

Bad Habit #5 – Judging Books by Their Covers

I’m inclined to think this is something a lot of us do as readers. After all, if we didn’t, why would people care so much about what covers looked like in the first place? Still, there are many times when a book has nothing to do with its cover. Covers can be misleading. Covers can lie. They can also be magnificent works of art. I think I fell in love with Patricia K. McKillip’s writing just as much as Kinuko Y. Craft’s covers for her books.

There are some books that I’m tempted to buy (stop lying–did buy) just because of the cover art. And there are equal numbers of books that I have passed on because I looked at the cover and thought ‘meh’. I probably would never have read and come to love Carol Berg’s Transformation if I hadn’t had several people recommend it to me because I wouldn’t have picked up that cover in the bookstore. And yet…..I still find myself browsing covers in bookstores. Well then.

 

So, that’s it, a few of my bad habits. Do you have any bad habits of your own? Leave a note in the comments or feel free to consider yourself tagged and fill out one of these for your own blog. I’d love to see your answers!