Bookhangover and How I Deal With It

Hello, fellas! In today's post I'm talking about book hangovers and my way to deal with them! 

📖 What is a book hangover?

You can see what the first picture says: Inability to start a new book because you’re still living in the last book’s world; but I did my research this time and decided to share some more definitions of it (they are copied from the websites I looked into).

1. When you've finished a book and you suddenly return to the real world, but the real world feels incomplete or surreal because you're still living in the world of the book.

2. The headache you get after staying up into the wee hours of the morning staring at teeny tiny print.

3. The inability to start a new book because you are still living in the old book's world 

4. The inability to function at work/school because you were up all night binge-reading

5. When you stay up all night reading and go to bed at 2 am and when you wake up you realize you are back to reality and you are faced with the fact that you are a) not in the book world b)you finished the book and you don’t know what to do with your life c) you are overly exhausted and still have to cope with daily things or d) you have to get back to your boring life after you have lived an exciting one.

📖 The way I understand it:

I prefer the very first definition I gave, the one in the picture on the top (Inability to start a new book because you’re still living in the last book’s world) but when I have a book hangover I literally get obsessed with the book so much that I actually dream about it which results in my lack of sleep. As an easily distracted person, this is a really bad condition for my concentration because the only thing I can think of is the book. Nothing else.

📖 My book hangover books

The first book that came to my mind is The Fault in Our Stars. This is the first book that obsessed me but I was only 15 and nearly an inexperienced reader. John Green writes in a captivating and in a very touching way but I highly doubt his book will have the same effect on me now. I started reading it out of curiosity and liked it so much that I couldn’t sleep that night. I finished it the next day.

The second book is the one I thought of the very first time I intended to write this post. It is The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. To me, The Way of Kings is a synonym to a book hangover. My history with it begins a week before I got my hands on it. I knew it had been ordered and I knew that my grandparents are supposed to give it to me the following week but I couldn’t wait, I couldn’t read anything else. I was craving for it so hard that I couldn’t get into the books I started at the time- at least five books I picked up and put down and some of them I haven’t touched since. To say I was obsessed in advance is one way to put it.

Then, as I started reading it, I was immediately engrossed in it, despite the typical slow start but when I got to the real deal…Well, let’s just say that I dreamt of Kaladin, Dalinar and Adolin all night long. I couldn’t believe how much I loved it and for a time I spoke and thought only of The Way of Kings and its companion Words of Radiance that I read a week later. This is one of the reasons Brandon Sanderson is my favourite author of all time.

I remember that I dreamt of a book a while back but I cannot recall which one it was. I strongly believe that it was Magnus Chase and the Hammer of Thor but I am dubious.

📖 My cure: The way I deal with it

My cure couldn’t be more unimpressive. I’ve been using it for far more things than I realised like getting something out of my mind and concentrating. You may find it odd but it really is what helps me the most. What is it?

Writing. I write down everything that bothers me.

It works, it really works and I’ve done it three times with The Way of Kings because the book is too long for me to write it a decent review. I made separate posts on what impressed me.

I don’t need to share whatever I’ve written with anybody in order to get it out of my mind or to come out of my book hangover although I’ve done it. This way I take the burden, so to speak, off my shoulders and I am able to think more clearly. I even wrote a very angry post about the TV show Shadowhunters because it is so unprofessional… It’s like a fanfiction TV series- entertaining but not the real deal and I decided to accept it for what it is. I’ve written many other things that I have or have not posted on different topics. It works for me and I don’t have a problem with sharing my opinion.

That’s why it is not hard for me to begin a new book right away when I’ve had a book hangover. I get over it quite easily and the only exceptions are books like The Way of Kings, The Final Empire and Empire of Storms. In this case, I tend to think about certain actions or the feelings I had while reading it.

This post turned out to be way longer than I expected. As I said in the beginning, I wish my Creative muse was as active as my Blogger one which made me take notes on my future post at the time, instead of studying for my finals.

One last question I hope you do not ignore: How do you deal with you book hangover?