My Top Ten Funniest Reading Memories

Is it really Tuesday already? I’m about to take my boyfriend to a job interview today (wish him luck!!) and due to the building works we have no shower, let’s just say I won’t be getting too close to anyone at his prospectus office.

But for now, being Tuesday, I will celebrate (because obvs Tuesday is celebratory day…) with the usual Top Ten Tuesday meme by That Artsy Reader Girl. This weeks topic is on Books with Sensory Reading Memories which is things you remember when you read a book. I’ve mixed it up a little bit and gone with ten funny reading memories.

1. The Book Thief

You’ve all read The Book Thief right? With that heart wrenching ending that just makes you well up for poor Liesel and friends. I decided to finish this known-to-be-sad novel sitting on a busy and stuffy summer train to Cambridge from London. Boxed in by men with trimmed hair and pristine suits all looking very important and not at all like they appreciated the girl stifling tears in the corner clutching her book in one hand and train tickets in the other. Suffice to say that was embarrassing.

2. Emma by Jane Austen

Emma is a civilised book I like to think. Old fashioned, fancy writing with completely unrelatable characters who sit in mansions all day and worry about marriage- all very quant. So where better to read this novel than a warm bath on a summer evening, surrounded by suds and blaring some less civilised music in the background? Suffice to say my copy of Emma is now sporting some very unsophisticated crinkled pages and dark watermarks, but hey you live and learn.

3. The Ruby in the Smoke By Phillip Pullman

I distinctly remember reading this little gem (see what I did there? Hehe) at school while staring in a slightly minor role in the play my school were putting on. I was a fairy in Midsummer Nights Dream with a grand total of one line, although this was actually an improvement because I was last a lepper in Jesus Christ Superstar which was a lot less dignified. Anyway, I digress, I remember getting to a particularly good bit in this book, all about opium, when I may have accidently missed my curtain cue and had to be shoved on stage by my very unimpressed drama teacher. Suffice to say I was not casted in the next school play.

4. Foundations of Computer Science Compilation by my Lecturer (I think he wanted us to buy his book….)

What’s this? A fact book??? And a text book no less. Don’t worry I’m not about to make a recommendation, this is just another funny story. Being the hard working and astute student I like to believe I am I dragged this hefty text book all the way to Scotland on holiday in preparation for the exams I had three weeks later. As it turns out I was a lot less studious than I wanted to be and my friends snapped many pictures of me using this particular page turner as a pillow before offering to throw it in the rather large Scottish Loch outside….

5. A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab

This story will drive the nail in the coffin on your delusions of me being at all studious. I remember during my January exams my housemate had played many hours of some latest game and we were discussing how much he was procrastinating. This backfired horribly when he pointed out I had read this five hundred page brick of a book during our exam week. Ooops.

6. Catching Fire by Suzanne Colins

I am rarely found without a book tucked into my bag. And I continued with this philosophy during my Duke of Edinburgh’s award, where we walk many miles and camp each night and because sod’s law it usually rains constantly. I’m sure you can tell where this going. Catching Fire got a nice little trip around the soggy Yorkshire Dales before I begrudgingly decided to keep the moth eaten copy and buy the library a new one…

7. My A Level Physics Text Book

Once again, not a recommendation, although this story might explain why my physics result wasn’t quite what I was predicted. It was the impossibly warm day before my exam and me and my friend climbed out of our sixth form window to the fire escape at the top of our school (potentially breaking a lot of health and safety regulations). With our legs slotted between the darkly painted rails and the sun glinting impossibly off my text book we spent much longer admiring the puny scurry of the school below, the great view and chalking our names into the bricks than I spent revising for physics. Oops.

8. Maximum Ride

This is a rare story where my two favourite things clashed- food and books. I studyed at boarding school and just in the midst of an exciting Max Ride flock against the mad scientists (I think I was just at the end of the third one) dinner was starting to be served. Despite waving my friends away and promising I’d catch up I soon found myself very hungry and dinner-less during homework time that night.

9. Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix

Anyone else see those five minutes between being ready and needing to start your walk to school as reading time? Because while reading the wonders of Harry Potter I certainly did and naturally those five minutes were always longer than five minutes in practice. My form tutor got very annoyed that I was late not once, but every day for a week, while finishing this fantastic novel.

10. Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan

I can’t actually remember which of these I was reading at the time but I remember me and my friend having a very philosophical argument debate in our GCSE English class when we should have been delving into the motifs in Lord of the Flies. Anyway our intellectual debate soon required more substance and we started flicking through the book in a hunt for quotes that would embellish our arguments when a very scorned English teacher took the book of us for the rest of the lesson. She did not see it my way when I assured her we were improving our reasoning skills.

So there you have it! Ten funny book stories. Can you relate to any of these?  Do you have any of your own? Did you do Top Ten Tuesday and if so what was it on? Love to hear from you in the comments section!