11 Bookish Feelings We Need Words For
We’ve got beautiful words for some of our Book Feels and habits. Tsundoku is a Japanese term for books piling up, unread. A bibliophile is a person who loves or collects books. A librocubicultarist is someone who reads in bed. But what do you call that feeling when you recommend a book to a friend, and not only do they read it – they love it? Or conversely… when they don’t like it at all?
Without further ado, here’s a list of Book Feels, mostly crowdsourced from other awesome Rioters, for which we would like terms to exist. And by the by, we’ve published a post similar to this before, but there’s no overlap, so if you want to commiserate over even more Book Feels, mosey on over.
That feeling when you’re the only person at book club who actually enjoyed the book.
I mentioned the feelings of a pal enjoying or not a book you lent, but what about that anxiety in between?
That feeling when you’ve time traveled a little bit – when you’re reading and, oops? Two hours have gone by? (Jessica Pryde submits “bookstracted” as a word suggestion for this one!)
Browsing your library’s digital collection, feeling like you’re shopping, except you aren’t actually spending any money.
When characters who are supposed to speak a different dialect somehow speak like Americans, because…audience? Or something?
That listlessness and weirdness when you want to read something, but nothing you pick up works or feels right.
That feeling when you finally read a book that is super popular and totally get all the references now.
When you pick up a book and after reading the first sentence or two, you just know it was the perfect find.
When you’re just feeling too many emotions after reading a book and need a little recovery time.
That feeling when reading a book once isn’t enough – it totally needs a re-read.
And…
That feeling when you’ve found your bookish soulmate.
