Member-only story
Unpopular Opinion: I Hate Being Asked What I’m Reading
Or, Book Lover Doesn’t Want To Discuss Books
I was happily enjoying my lunch break, eating pasta as I do almost every single shift, and reading a book on my Kindle. It’s an excellent book, Katherine Blakeman’s The Summer We Had, so I was enjoying it a lot; you’d think I want to shout about it (and online I do). So when one of my co-workers passed by, glancing over at my Kindle, and asked the dreaded question: “What are you reading?” it’s weird that I cringed.
There are two reasons why really — 1) if I’m reading, I probably don’t want to talk, and the one that I’m writing about today, 2) unless you’ve heard of this book, we’re both in for a tedious conversation, aren’t we?
Now, this question is more easily answered when reading a physical copy of a book. Then I simply hold it up so the questioner can see the cover, but when it’s an e-book there’s nothing like that without clunkily flipping to the cover and showing them the screen. The reason that showing them the cover is an easy out is that they’ll either recognize it and get it, or they’ll at least know they haven’t heard of it and it’s up to them if they want to ask me what it’s about, etc, which I don’t mind.
Generally, in my experience, people who ask this question don’t read much themselves…
