26 Neologisms for Booklovers

Adverbosity
Overuse of words ending in -ly.

Bibliocrisy
Happily accepting cracked spines and dog ears in secondhand books, whilst being fanatical about the condition of books acquired new.

Cinelitic
Possessed of the urge to read a book you never knew existed until it was made into a film.

Debread
The scraps of paper, old library borrowing slips, unused postcards, etc. left in a book by previous readers.

Exhibooktionism
Choosing a particularly obscure, intellectual, literary, or all of the above book to read while commuting, in order to impress your fellow passengers.

Forgettababble
Written in such a convoluted style that by the time you reach the end of a sentence or paragraph, you can’t remember how it started. Or even what it’s about.

Genrelise
To make (often unflattering) assumptions about a book or its reader based on genre.

Herowhine
A female main character so annoyingly backbone-less you can hardly bear to read about her.

Intervet
To search for and read numerous reviews online before deciding whether or not to read a given book.

Jugglelitting
The fine art of keeping on top of fourteen library books with three due dates between them, the books you’re reviewing on LibraryThing, the latest book club selection, and the technothriller you borrowed from your brother.

Kidflapped
Wanting to buy a book for a friend or relative’s child, but totally clueless as to what might suit.

Lost in quotation
Flipping madly through a book in search of a line or passage whose page number you were sure you’d remember.

Marjunk
The useless jottings left in a book by a previous reader.

Non sequeltur
The act of reading a series out of order.

Optimage
When looking to buy a particular book, to hold out for an edition with a less hideous cover.

Paragraphanoid
Instinctively wary of any book whose pages are lacking in white space.

Quandaread
The situation in which you find yourself when you have a large TBR pile but nothing to read.

Rubbash
To vent one’s feelings in a scathing review of a book with no merit whatsoever.

Salitate
To look forward eagerly to reading a much-anticipated book.

Travelsty
The act of slipping a library book into your suitcase, even though you’re certain the library would consider it a cardinal sin to take its property interstate/overseas.

Uniliterary
Having 1 copy shared between 33 library branches.

Vagaread of fate
The phenomenon of entering a store in search of one book and leaving with five ... none of them the book you originally intended to purchase.

Wishful rethinking
The conviction that this time you will reach the end of a book that you’ve abandoned, because you’re sure it can’t be as unenjoyable as you remember.

Xenophilistinic
Perfectly happy to read any translation of a foreign work, regardless of what others have to say about its quality.

Yuletried
Sorely tempted to read the books you’ve bought to give as Christmas presents.

Ziploan
A library book borrowed in spite of a large TBR pile, on the grounds that it won’t take long to read.