1. You can never read just a few pages.

2. When you finish a book that has CHANGED YOUR LIFE, you are still somehow expected to go into work the next day, cook dinner and interact with other human beings.

3. You haven’t eaten or visited the bathroom in about nine hours, and you keep telling yourself, “I’ll just wait until I finish this good bit.”

But the good bit never ends.

4. When you walk into a book store before pay day and you’re like:

5. When you have to wait for an author to write the next book in the series. (George R R Martin we are looking at you.)

6. You would rather struggle through travel sickness, than not read on a long trip.

7. When you lend somebody one of your books, and it comes back with dog-ears, a bent cover and a stain that looks suspiciously like spaghetti bolognaise.

And they don’t even apologise.

8. You develop instant crushes on handsome men reading.

In fact, less-than-handsome men become more attractive because of the book in their hand.

9. There are some series you’re deliberately avoiding because you know once you start reading, you won’t be able to stop until you’ve finished every book.

And you just don’t have the time for that right now.

10. Your favourite Disney princess is Belle because she inherits that massive library.

11. You have cancelled plans with friends because you would rather read.

But you have to hide it from them.

12. You have more fictional crushes than real life ones.

13. When you go to buy a book, and you can only find the one with the ‘movie’ cover, you kind of don’t want to buy it anymore.

14. On the other hand, you own multiple copies of your favourite book, because you love all the covers.

And you’re running out of shelf space.

15. You have trouble deciding whether you want to arrange your bookshelf by size, author, genre, or even colour…

16. When they make a movie from a book and they get the casting ALL wrong.

17. When you finish a really sad book in public, and end up crying loudly and everyone looks at you funny.

Because you’re not crying in a quietly tortured kind of way. It’s in a gross, snotty way.

18. When you’re reading on an iPad or Kindle and the battery dies halfway through the climax. And you die with it.

19. Sometimes you start hyperventilating at the thought of how many books have ever been published… and the fact that you won’t get to read them all.

20. Whenever you walk past a second-hand bookstore, you have to stop and smell the merchandise. Old book smell is your drug.

21. Seeing those Pinterest pics where people have chopped up books for “craft” is like a knife straight into your soul.

22. When you talk to someone and they say Harry and Hermione should have ended up together at the end of Harry Potter, and you want to yell, “DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND SUBTEXT??”

Because no.

23. If one your favourite characters dies while reading a book, you need to wait a respectful period of time before starting another book. In honour of their memory.

24. When a guy says on a date he mainly reads true crime books, that’s the last date you’ll have with him.

25. Just quietly, you still own and use a physical dictionary.

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Here are some of our favourite Australian books: 

GALLERY CODE

Get Reading!

The Little Refugee - Anh Do & Suzanne Do Illustrated by Bruce Whatley

The 26-Storey Treehouse - Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton

Absolution Creek - Nicole Alexander

After the Darkness - Honey Brown

Beneath the Darkening Sky - Majok Tulba

Blood - Tony Birch

Cold Grave - Kathryn Fox

Foals Bread - Gillian Mears

Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East - Benjamin Law

The Light Between Oceans - M.L. Stedman

My Journey - Jim Stynes

Rotten Gods - Greg Barron

Say You’re Sorry - Michael Robotham

Secrets of the Tides - Hannah Richell

The Boy Who Fell to Earth - Kathy Lette

The Engagement - Chloe Hooper

The Inca Prophecy - Adrian d’Hagé

The Mothers’ Group - Fiona Higgins

The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots - Loretta Hill

The Street Sweeper - Elliot Perlman

Velocity - Steve Worland

Wattle Creek - Fiona McCallum