15 Ridiculous Inventions for Book Nerds

We book nerds have it rough. It’s true, we really do, and no one knows it. Throughout the history of mankind there have been 68 notable inventions in transportation, 129 notable inventions in medicine, 267 landmark inventions in telecommunications, 542 earth-shattering inventions in kitchen appliances, and 1,213,456 smartphone apps created (1,650,019 of which are games).
Compared to these numbers, we long-suffering bookworms have had but a handful of inventions to sustain us through the ages. Some of the biggest innovative highlights include the invention of the printing press, the invention of the paperback, the invention of the bookmark, the invention of Peggy’s “Book Club Banana Bread,” and the invention of ereaders.
Clearly, we need to invent more fancy gadgets and doodads to keep up with the times and make our reading lives easier. To get our collective literature-loving gears turning, we’ve come up with a few inventions just for book nerds.
1. A handkerchief that clips to your book, for when you’re reading a real tearjerker.
2.A dating app that finds potential matches based on people currently reading the same book as you, or one of the reads off your Favorites shelf.
3. A clear plastic table that goes over your face when you’re lying down, so you can read hands-free without worrying about dropping your book on your face.
4. An internet-enabled bookmark that tracks your progress page by page, in order to tell your very eager friends if you got to the good part yet.
5. A plastic placemat that goes over your book so you can read while you eat without getting spaghetti sauce on the pages.
6. A spray that makes your book waterproof, for those times when you want to read at the pool, the beach, or in the bathtub.
7. A book iron for when your book got wet and wrinkly, and you want it in pristine condition.
8. Book weights you can attach to your book that’ll help tone your arm muscles while you read.
9. An extendable grabber to reach books on the top shelf at the store.
10. A book safety net for your nightstand, in case you pile so many books beside you that they topple over.
11. A locked bookcase with a timer, for those times when you need help resisting the temptation to do nothing else but read (like, say, the day before Tax Day).
12. A Find-My-Book bookmark and accompanying app for readers who are absentminded and often misplace their book.
13. An app that lets you take a photo of a word and look at the definition on your phone.
14. A durable travel dust jacket that also stashes your I.D., boarding pass, and travel documents in various pockets on the cover of your book.
15. A magic 8-ball that comes up with brand-new, ironclad excuses for skipping events so you can stay home and read.