16 Signs You’ve Been Hanging Out at the Bookstore Too Much

There comes a time in every bookworm’s life when you realize you’ve been hanging out a little too long in the bookstore. Often it starts when it’s cold outside: the days grow dark and short, the air is icy, and all you want to do is curl up somewhere warm with a couple thousand good books. You start stopping by the bookstore every day, staying just a little bit longer each time. Pretty soon you’re spending hours upon hours with books for company, sustaining yourself with the café’s coffee and pastries.
Then one day, you start to worry. Have I been hibernating in this literary sanctuary for too long? Have I grown soft with the luxury of endless reading material, coffee, and cookies? Dare I step out into the wilderness again? If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, you might want to check for these 16 signs you’ve been in a bookstore too long:
1. All the staff members know your name. And you know all of their names, and their significant other’s names, and their pet’s names, and their birthdays…
2. You’ve eaten all three meals, and maybe a snack or two, from the bookstore coffee shop.
3. You find yourself giving directions using literary genres. “Take a left at Fantasy, go through Teens, and take a right at Travel.”
4. You notice immediately when the store is running low on copies of a novel. And you know exactly where to find more copies.
5. You know your way around the bookstore blindfolded.
6. In fact, you can find any author’s books in the store without looking. Shoppers are starting to ask you for help, and you never correct them.
7. You’ve been curled up in one of the chairs so long, each of your limbs has spent some time asleep in the past six hours.
8. You’ve live-tweeted conversations overheard between strangers about what books they recommend. You might also have live-tweeted an entire breakup in the YA section…
9. You’ve helped re-shelve random piles of books because you know exactly where they all belong.
10. When visiting authors stop by, you greet them with, “Welcome to my abode!” before remembering the bookstore is not, in fact, your abode.
11. You stretch your legs by doing lunges from the Magazine section to the Children’s section, and then power walking from Travel to Biographies.
12. You’ve found the best reading nook in the entire store: one where you can barely hear other customers, but you can still smell fresh coffee brewing from the café.
13. You know exactly what time it is by which section of the Romance shelves the sunlight is currently hitting.
14. The bookstore cafe has invented a new beverage and named it in your honor.
15. You keep contributing your own favorite book selections to the “Recommended Reading” display table.
16. You’ve texted people that you’re “at the gym,” “at the store,” or “stuck in traffic!” because you don’t want everyone to know you’ve been in the bookstore for fourteen hours.