Mark your place in the novel you’re in the middle of, and consider this for a second. Most conversations around books aren’t about books at all. Instead, they’re about how much non-readers want to convince others that yes, yes, they are ardent readers too.
Here’s the most common one: Do you prefer physical books or the Kindle? On Reddit, every month someone revives the query on a new thread. But here’s the thing, dedicated readers don’t care. They’ll read anything, anywhere. They’ve downloaded public-domain classics on their phone and squinted through A Tale Of Two Cities on the tiny screen. They’ve stayed back late at work to sneakily use the office printer, because a website had a one-day-free download of Andy Weir’s Casey & Andy. They’re past these challenges such as paperback or ebook. They smelled old books, liked it and moved on. Their bookmark is the invoice that was taped to their recent Zomato order.
Don’t try to shame them about book covers either. There are, among readers, obsessives who don’t like a “Now A Major TV Series” sticker on their book, or cover art that references the movie adaptation. This doesn’t deter the determined. Their Off Campus copy probably came from the second-hand pile, and probably didn’t have a cover. They don’t care that Timothee Chalamet is on the cover of the Dune books – Frank Herbert wrote them in 1965, this is hardly a first-edition.
Fitness freaks enjoy metrics. They count steps, kilos, calories, protein grams and REM minutes. So, people tend to think that loving books means keeping track too. Don’t ask readers how many titles they’ve clocked in a year. You’re just offending their patron saint of reading, Rory Gilmore. You may ask them how many books are in their TBR pile. But keep a hanky ready; they might cry.
On BookTok, there is endless chatter about which of the ACOTAR books is best (M&F, but wrong answers are OK). There’s some concern that Jeremy Irons’s 11-hour narration of Lolita, which came out in 2005, before audiobooks were a thing, might be too sexy (It is, but so what?). Most readers are actually excited about the Harry Potter books becoming a TV series. They know how much the eight movies left out. They want justice for Peeves and Charlie Weasley. And every book club has, at some point, told an inductee that sometimes a movie is better than its source book (Hello, Mean Girls!).
But really, all this energy is much better spent reading. Because the people who devour books – any books, even the trashy stuff – aren’t out there performing for others or judging what someone else is reading. They’re using every hack they can to read more or read more deeply, or read better.
Reader life is hard. Half the men in One Hundred Years Of Solitude are called Jose or Aureliano. So, don’t derail their focus with inane arguments about breaking in a spine, dog-earing, annotations, Kindle-only editions. A book doesn’t reside in the pages, or on a screen, anyway. Loving books is about loving stories and information, not about keeping paper pristine. And if they’ve switched from paper to screen, it’s hardly a betrayal. A History Of The World in 100 Objects is best read in iBooks, on an iPad – the physical version is too heavy to lug around, the Kindle reduces all the photos to black-and-white.
The true hallmark of a reader is that they will read anything, in any form. They’ll click on Substack essays and fan fiction. They’ll pore over PDF scans of 2003 National Geographics (a great year for zebras). They hit Ctrl A + Ctrl C in that sweet second before a magazine’s paywall hits, and copy the whole thing to read on the Notes app. They’ll read pamphlets and posters. And they’re not impressed by anyone who’s reading War and Peace on the Metro – unless they finish the thing.
From HT Brunch, June 13, 2026
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