It's happened to all of us. We say we love reading and they're like:
And you repeat yourself and then they just look at you, preceded by comments that will irk us readers because non-readers JUST DON'T GET IT.
1. Books are boring.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. No. They are the furthest thing from boring. Have you read The Hunger Games? Divergent? Boy Nobody? Percy Jackson? Life As We Knew It? Harry Potter? (Nah, you've probably watched the movies for some of these instead.) IF YOU DID YOU WOULDN'T SPOUT SUCH LIEEEESSSSS. There's plot twists and romance and funny banter and more plot twists and it's NOT BORING. You're boring. Ha.
I clearly need to work on better insults.
2. Why do you care so much? It's just fiction.
3. Me: Have you read the book?
Muggle: Nah, I'm going to see the movie instead. Why bother reading the book?
Muggle: Nah, I'm going to see the movie instead. Why bother reading the book?
Firstly, I'm not really a fan of movies or TV in general. I watched a heck of a lot of TV when I was younger but then I discovered books. Secondly, DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH DETAIL YOU'RE MISSING OUT ON?! A lot. A lot lot. Take The Fault in Our Stars, for an instance. It was a brilliantly done movie but there were things that were missing, you didn't always know exactly what the characters were feeling at that particular moment and they didn't capture perfectly (although they did do an excellent job) the true friendship and love between all the characters. And with movies, you can't see all that. The directors can't incorporate what thoughts are bouncing through the characters' heads into the movie, it would be incredibly jumbled and hard to follow if they did. Thirdly, I like being able to picture things by myself and not with the help of Hollywood.
4. Instead of reading about fictional things, why don't you live more in the real world? Instead of reading about things, why don't you actually do them?
BECAUSE THE REAL WORLD IS SCARY. There's murderers and thieves and wars and illnesses and bullies and OKAY fine, there's that in books too but you know that it might be resolved by the end of the book and that you might get a happy ending. You know that in a book these problems can't hurt you (well, emotionally they can, hello feels) or anybody else (unless they also get too emotionally attached to books like we do) but in reality, these things are real and occurring and can hurt us, our loved ones and everyone else on this planet.
Although I haven't had someone ask me that second question in those words, someone has once said to me I should go do more things and "experience" more things like other teenagers. Most teenagers I know go to parties, drink and sleep around so uh, no thanks. But I do experience stuff. I'm hoping to start up piano lessons and I suddenly really want to go for drumming lessons and perhaps archery too (I could be Katniss! Minus the whole killing thing, of course. BE KIND.) and I do experience things but there's a lot of things that one can't experience in real life, but they can when reading. Can you ride upon a unicorn's back in real life? Or fight sea monsters? Or have Greek gods as parents? Can you travel to Middle Earth? Can you be an international popstar? (Well, you might be able to, but the chances are quite unlikely. And you know, for me there's that case of being socially awkward, having stage fright and not exactly being able to sing.)
Just let me be, let me live in my fantasy world.
5. Reading is stupid.
No, you're stupid. Okay, I never say that, I'm too nice but really, it's not stupid at ALL. You learn things. You make fictional friends. You get inside someone's head (basically) and you see the world from a whole new perspective. You might think I'm wasting my time reading about something that isn't real, but I'd much rather do that than live in an ordinary world without the written word. Reading is utterly magical and I feel sincerely sorry for people who don't read.
These are the top 5 things you should never say to a book lover! Has anyone ever said these to you?