Bookish Pet Peeves Part 1

Part 1 

Hello everyone!  I have many reviews I am working on right now but this post has been rambling around in my head for some time and I think it’s something we can all relate to.  Bookish Pet Peeves.  This post will be in 2 parts. 

Part 1 is going to focus on the physical book buying/owning aspect, whereas, Part 2 will focus on my pet peeves in the stories themselves.  Part 2 is going to be posted on my dear friend and fellow book nerd Sarah Leigh's blog, A Girl Who Reads.  So check there for part 2.  I’m sure many of you will agree with me on most and may even have some of your own I’ve neglected to mention so please share them below so we can add them and discuss.  Let's get right into them the Bookish Pet Peeves, in no particular order.

1) Stickers.  I understand needing to pu

t them on for pricing and jazz sure. How is it possible though that some use the nice glue that peels off super easy and others seem to be welded onto the book cover and unwilling to let go without serious work or *gasp* possible book damage.  My thoughts are to only use the good easy to peel, non residue leaving glue or don't use stickers at all.

                1A) Placement.  This one needs a sub category.  Even the good stickers sometimes suffer from…bad placement.  If I’m browsing through the store, perusing the beautiful books on the shelf and come across one of interest I would like to be able to read the back of the book and discover what it is about and if I want to take it home with me.  That is rather hard when a sticker is taking up half the summary space.

2) Cover changes.  How many of you have started a series with a cover you may or may not adore only to have the at least one book, many times the last one, in the series changed?  Yep, I hate it.  They no longer match on my beautiful shelf.  Worst of all is when you can’t even recognize it.  The change looks so completely different that you would never guess it was part of a series but something completely different.  Example: Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi or The Curse Workers series by Holly Black to name a few that I own.  With Shatter Me in order to get a matching set you have to get paperback or you have to get the miss match covers.  Why? 

                *Side note I recently learned via booktube that the hard covers for Stephanie Perkins books, are being re-jacketed so they match.  OMG how flipping awesome is that?  All publishers should do that, and have an option where people like me could order just the matching cover.

3) Series format changes.  This is similar to #2 as it changes the appearance of the series but is more focused on the books that start out in paperback as the only options available and then as it becomes popular the other half come out in hardcover.  Fine, I get it that they didn’t have hardcovers at first, but why not capitalize on the fact that people like myself would rebuy the first book or 3 in hardcover if it was offered, with a matching cover that is?  Perfect example:  The Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead. 

4) Books in a series not marked. Recently I’ve purchased a lot of books, many were complete series, that I have not had the pleasure of reading yet.  It is an exciting thing to receive all the books in the mail and then sort through them and put them on your shelf.  However, if you haven’t read the books yet, it may be difficult to put them in the correct order, and reading the synopsis on the back would just spoil you.  I wish they would clearly mark somewhere on the book spine, front, or even the title page what book # it is in a series.  Save me the hassle of looking it up.  Also this would allow someone picking up a brand new book to see and prepare for a series and not a stand-alone.  I would have loved to know many of my books were going to be series before starting them, I might have held off a little longer so the wait would have been shorter before the next book. 

WHY?  JUST WHY?

5) Bent pages.  I am very OCD about my books, I will not just pick it up off the shelf and buy it in the store.  No.  I have to page through it to make sure there are no stray marks on the pages, tares, or anything that otherwise make it less than the perfect book for me.  Sarah Leigh has learned this while shopping with me and normally just hands me the book for inspection.  Grasshopper learned fast.  This is also why I am super picky about who I lend books out to, with understanding of not to dog ear my pages for fear of ninja attack.  This is why I also normally lend them out with a book mark handily inside.

6) Standard size.  I have a good collection of both hardcover and paperback books.  I prefer the hard covers for many reasons.  One of those reasons being that the hardcover books seem to have a standard size.  I'm not talking length but height, you have the average book and the tall book.  Okay two options I can work with and all my shelves can be level and even, with a rare exception.  Then you have the paperback.  They have so many different heights it is insane to try and line them up evenly on your shelf, they never work, I have about 8 different heights on one shelf and it drives me bonkers. You would assume it would make sense to only have 1-2 format sizes, that it would save money right?  What do I know? 

                There you have my 6 main Bookish Pet Peeves dealing with the physical.  Stay tuned and I’ll have Part 2 up on Sarah Leigh's blog tomorrow.  Share your own physical book pet peeves with me below.