What is your reading toxic trait?

Mine: If I paid for the book, I'm finishing it. Even if I'm hate-reading by chapter five. 💀 & I judge a book by its cover 👀

Heyy so I recently watched a lot of youtube videos about book overconsumption and now I'm curious about your opinions. 🙂‍↕️ At what point do you think a person is overconsuming books? Do you judge people who buy a lot of books/make big haul content?

Here is my take on the situation: I bought too many books for a long time period and kind of regret it. In like 2020 I started to read more books than mangas again, because finally more queer books got released. I watched a lot of book content and read a lot of booktok books that were available in my library. I bought a lot of cheap books second hand, even ones I was only a little bit interested in, because I was still defining my taste and didn't think enough about this. This was also around the first time I had a real job and more than enough money to buy anything I wanted, so I bought A LOT new queer books, because me and queer books are like a child in a candy store ig. 😂 Also I have my own bookstagram account and got a lot of free books from publishers and authors. This lead to a HUGE tbr. Now a few years later I kind of regret buying that many books, because I don't have that much space and should have saved some of that money. Now I'm deliberately trying to make my tbr much smaller and only buy books that I think could become 5 star reads, because everything else is not worth taking my space and money. (For books I'm not sure I'll like I use the library, but when they don't have it, I just don't read it.) So my point is that people may have their reasons for getting carried away, buying too many books and make haul content. For some people reading is their only hobby and it makes sense they have a big budget. Some people will regret buying too much and learn from that. (I personally define overconsumption in this context as buying more than you can read or more than you have space/budget for.) In a lot of youtube videos the criticism is very harsh and I partly agree, because some people only buy that amount of books for content and views and make crazy unhaul videos a few months later, in which they unhaul like 100 books they recently bought and didn't read, because they didn't think a second before buying.  🫪 But I think we shouldn't forget that a lot of book influencers are just young people with first time adult money in a bad economic situation (will never be able to afford big purchases like house, so companies encourage spending all your money on smaller things like subscribtions/skincare/fast fashion). I just get the feeling that some people are a little bit too much outraged/scandalized by people who overconsume books. It's worth critisizing it and asking if someone really should buy that many books, but at least on youtube this discussion got a bit too judgy for me personally. 😅 Like "omg how can she buy that much, that's crazy, this kind of consumption makes me sick, it's ridiculous". Often you don't even know how much that person really reads and not everyone has access to libraries. Also books don't expire like skincare, so it doesn't matter if you read it now or in ten years. If you have the space and money and are confident you'll like a book, buy as many as you think are acceptable. Critisizing consumption and talking about more mindful consumption is great, but shaming people who buy a lot of books in general? Srsly nah. Reminds me of the discussion about people who "read too much, don't they have a life?".

For like a decade, I have written a review for every book I've read because I tend to forget them. People would ask me, "have you read so-and-so" and I'd be like "I have no idea let me check". Check. Then, "ah yes, I did and this is what I thought about it (even if in reality I have zero recollection of the book)." For books that are part of a series, I would even write myself a little (in spoilers) summary at the end of the review so I would know what I was jumping into when the next book came out (I fully intend on doing this in the forums from now on hehe. Maybe a "Previously on...." type post in the first part of the forum of the next book). Sometimes on PB I see forum posts on my feed from books I read years ago and I have no idea what is being referenced.

One thing I love about PB is the notifications from forum posts I wrote about books that I read mooonths ago. These little reminders bring me back and I'm like oh yeah! The little reminders keep these books and their plots in my brain :D A lot of the times I can even remember enough to respond!

We'll see how this goes another year or two from now hehe. I wonder what that will be like when I will have amassed more posts for people to react to. Maybe we'll get overwhelmed by the notifications and they'll put time limits on them?? I hope not!Forums are so fun 🫶🏻

How are y'all at remembering book plots? Are you one of those magical people who remembers every book they've ever read?? Do you keep track of them?

I don’t mind the word panties but if the chapter indicates we are on a Norwegian farm in 1876, saying wet panties, especially multiple times really does not fit and stands out in a way that took me out of the flow. It also confused me enough I was googling the origins of the word panties before 8am 😅

And I’m not normally super nit-picky on word choices but as I’m reading it translated to English I have to wonder if the author originally used a more modern term for women’s undergarments, if this phrase was intentional for its ability to pull the readers mind to the sexual meaning of wet panties (though if so, I don't think it is necessary considering the context and don't know if it paid off), or if this is just a weird choice from the translator.