100 Happy Bookish Feelings
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Loving books with a ferocious intensity is not always easy. Sometimes your favourite authors do some problematic things, or book Twitter is unnecessarily mean; sometimes your favourite book’s adaptation ruins everything you love and hold dear. But the next day, you wear your favourite t-shirt with a bookish reference, and a complete stranger looks at you, nods, and smiles knowingly. So here’s to happy bookish feelings; 99 more of them:
- Receiving book mail you didn’t order (or in some cases, ordered and forgot about)
- Buying a book you know you’ll never get to, but you need on your bookshelf
- When a book you’ve loved for ages starts getting the hype it deserves
- Someone coming back to you to say they loved your book recommendation
- Books and good coffee
- The heady smell of a good bookstore
- Looking up from a book and wondering where you arevia GIPHY
- Adding books to your Amazon cart (sometimes it really doesn’t matter if you really plan on buying them)
- Falling asleep on a book
- When someone asks you how you know that and you reply with “I read it in a book”
- Unboxing a squeal-worthy bookish subscription
- When a book podcast episode leads you to new bookish obsessions
- Finding a kickass feminist lead in a book or comic (preferably a comic, so that you can swoon over the art as well)
- Book swaps, whether with friends online or IRL
- When you’re scrolling the Internetz and some great bookish merch appears
- Meeting a favourite author IRL, and they turn out to not be problematic ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Books and dessert, preferably doughnuts or ice cream
- Finding your reading game after a long break
- A good bookstore in an unfamiliar city
- Scrolling through some good bookish Instagram
- Discovering new authors/artists/creators of colour
- Feeling special when you receive some secret bookish stuff through an author’s Patreon
- A satisfactory book pile (often teetering, always tall)via GIPHY
- Finding hidden jokes and/or easter eggs in comics
- Bookish newsletters which lead you down endless bookish rabbit-holes
- Reorganizing your bookshelves
- Discovering books you’d forgotten you owned while reorganizing your bookshelves
- Watching a toddler engrossed in a book
- Sneakily listening to a bookish podcast while pretending to work
- (booksellers/librarians only, please) Finding a new book for the picky 12-year-old who has read everything
- Spying someone reading a book you like in public
- Advance reading copies
- The accomplished feeling that comes with finishing a book in one sitting
via GIPHY - Bookish memes: all day, every day
- A truly excellent movie/TV adaptation that doesn’t ruin everything you’d imagined
- Rereading a childhood favourite, and it still holds up/is not racist!
- Coming across dog-eared, scribbled-upon copies of your childhood faves, which you refuse to part with
- Completing a bookish DIY project (from a bookmark to a bookshelf)
- Finding an unexpectedly good book deal online
- Discovering that your new favourite author has an entire body of unread work
- Reading a tweet from your favourite author and feeling like you know them now
- Unexpected finds in bookstores (last week I found a copy of The Hate U Give at a tiny bookstore, which I didn’t even know had been released in India, so I’m good on bookish fuzzies for a month now)
- Owning multiple copies of the same book, because that is a legitimate thing to do, okay?via GIPHY
- When someone gifts you a book with a great inscription
- All the feels from strangers’ loving inscriptions in second-hand books, brownie points for when they’re decades old
- Receiving news of your favourite comic book series not getting cancelled (*side-eyes Marvel*)
- Falling in love with a comic’s art, or as Susie puts it, finding a comic whose art you GROOVE on
- Good, smart bookish conversation at a gathering
- When a comic book series ends, or is on break for a while, and then suddenly you see it in your stack of pull list for the month when it’s returned
- Seeing yourself represented in a book (especially in a genre where you’ve never before gotten to identify with anyone/anything) because diversity matters
- Getting word on New Comic Book Day that stuff from your hold list came in
- A gift-wrapped book with neat edges
- Furiously texting your BFF about a bookish happeningvia GIPHY
- Carrying some familiar, loved books with you to a new city
- Authors reading their audiobooks
- Meeting someone with the same favorite book as you
- Book sales. Period.
- Book fairs which give you giddy feelings, because all you can see for miles are books
- People of colour on book covers
- When a book unexpectedly becomes an exercise in self-help
- Uninterrupted reading on an airplane/a secluded vacation spot because the internet doesn’t exist
- Browsing bookshelves with someone in comfortable silence
- DNFing a book that has been irking you for a whilevia GIPHY
- Passing books on to younger siblings or cousins
- Buying a pretty box set of your favourite series specifically for display purposes
- Making book lists of all kinds, from thematically-sorted TBR lists to giant Excel sheets tracking your reading life
- Getting your Goodreads account up-to-date after a hiatus (full disclosure, it’s been months since I updated mine)
- When someone gifts you a book you’ve been wanting to buy for a long while
- A happily-ever-after
- Being able to read for pleasure after a long bout of academia
- Writing about a book you’ve loved, and want to shout from the mountaintops about
- (booksellers/librarians only, please) When a customer comes back in to tell you how much they loved the book you recommended
- Discovering an unexpected author interview at the end of an audiobook
via GIPHY - Getting a reluctant reader to enjoy a book
- An unexpectedly great read outside your preferred genres
- When book club makes you completely rethink a novel
- When you have to stay in your car in the driveway, even though you’re home, so you can listen to just one more chapter
- Owning a piece of bookish jewellery you’ve coveted forever
- Finding out a narrator you love is recording/recorded a book you’re excited about
- Finding a secret reading nook in a library
- Discovering a long-sought book for your TBR in a Little Free Library
- Swoon-worthy bookish art on Pinterest/Tumblr
- (this one is for the good days gone by) Sneakily reading the latest Harry Potter when you’re supposed to be studyingvia GIPHY
- The joy of a graphic novel adaptation of a loved book, where a character looks just the way you imagined them
- Truly cathartic fanfiction
- Reading an article/blog post (sometimes even just a tweet) which echoes your feelings for a book
- Reading outside on a good-weather day (no bugs, please)
- Packing just the right number of books for your holiday
- Spending a gift card/birthday money solely on books (no regrets)
- TV characters who are book nerds and make for guaranteed bookish references in every episode
- Vast, gorgeous public librariesvia GIPHY
- Flipping a book so that all the spines line up on a bookshelf in a bookstore or library
- (let’s be real for a second) Lying to someone about being busy so that you can stay in and finish a book
- …On a related note, how great is reading in a cozy blanket on a winter day, with your body at optimum temperature?
- Donating books to good causes
- Managing to stay spoiler-free about a buzz-y book and enjoying the full effects of that surprising twist
- Absurd bookish quizzes with very satisfactory results (not you, Pottermore’s Patronus quiz)
- The thrill of standing in line outside a bookstore for a much-anticipated book release
- A bookish soulmate (could be a community or person, online or IRL)via GIPHY