16 Undeniable Signs You’re A Book Nerd

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  1. You looked up to Anne Shirley, the Pevensies, Jo March, Meg Murray, and Tom Sawyer more than you ever did Hillary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, or Justin Timberlake.  And while your sister can tell you what Kim Kardashian wore during her pregnancy, you wax eloquent on the angst of Holden Caulfield.
  2. While your siblings were winning trophies in club soccer and sweating it out on the hockey rink, you could be found lying on the floor of your room with a book.
  3. You find ways to work words like “lugubrious” and “perspicuity” into everyday conversation.
  4. While your besties are contemplating engagement all around you, you’re in a serious relationship with the book you’re going to get published.
  5. If you were the carsick type or performing some activity that didn’t free your hands to hold a book (this was before the existence of Kindles), books on tape were the way to go.  Like, you jogged around your neighborhood more breathless about what was going to happen to Harry Potter on your Walkman than the actual exercise.
  6. You love second-hand bookshops, even though your friends might find them smelly or creepy.
  7. You’re enamored with tea over coffee (unless you’re up late at night story — or paper-writing, in which case you may force yourself to drink it black, because you can’t picture Hemingway loading up on the cream and sugar).
  8. Pop series like The Mortal Instruments, The Hunger Games, and Divergent, make you vaguely sick; so did the Gatsby trend. (“That was my summer reading before it was cool, people!”)
  9. …though you may have fallen prey to the Twilight saga when it first came out…and it is a shame that you keep buried but will never let yourself live down.
  10. You’re more than a little bit of a grammar Nazi.
  11. You get a jolt of excitement in your stomach when you contemplate going to the library. (“The possibilities!”)
  12. Your friends ask you to edit their scholarship application papers.
  13. You think Dorothy Parker was a bigger badass than Angelina Jolie.
  14. Some variation of English (Creative Writing, Journalism, Poetry) is the only major for you, though your parents may urge you with threats and tears to be “practical.”
  15. You laugh at Oxford comma jokes, and puns are at once your greatest joy and affliction, the latter due to the fact that your friends vomit when you use them. (“Word play is art, ok?!?!?”)
  16. Your imaginary life is infinitely richer than your real one.  But you came to terms with that a long time ago, because while some of your friends feel the need to create drama to make their lives exciting, Billy Shakes did that for you five hundred years ago.