• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Page Number Check

Libre

Libre

Member
I have an strange idiosyncracy - almost a neurosis perhaps. Sometimes it bothers me, but I can't seem to do anything about it. I was wondering if anybody else suffers from this complex.

Whenever I turn the page of a book, I find I have to check the page numbers to make sure I'm actually seeing the very next page, and that two pages haven't stuck together. This started years ago, when in fact 2 pages DID stick together and what I was reading made no sense, since it continued from the previous page, which I did not see. Of course, I checked that immediately and rectified the situation by separating the stuck pages and going back one.

Ever since then, I check. If I forget to check, I might get a quarter of the way down the page and then I remember I haven't checked (even if what I'm reading makes perfect sense, which of course, it ususally does) and then I have to interrupt myself and turn back a page, re-read the last sentence and check the page number, just to make sure I haven't skipped one.

Maybe I should talk this over with a therapist? I'm not quite this persnickety in most other matters. OK, maybe I am. In many other areas, though (frequency of oil changes, stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, etc), I'm quite careless and cavalier.

One other note - I just realized that in the book I just finished - The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, I never checked the page numbers even once! That says something for how engrossing that book was. Maybe there is hope for me.
 
You're weird! :p It sounds like a perfectly normal obsession. I've often checked the page numbers myself-I've had books with very thin paper pages that stuck together and like you, I was mystified when the next page didn't make sense.

I was just thinking last night, why don't books have indexes anymore? I'm talking about fiction. It's easier to remember there's a great passage I want to re-read in Chapter 13 than page number 254. But where is Chapter 13? They don't put chapters at the tops of pages anymore. Hey, publishers, not all of us have photographic memories! :rolleyes:
 
If you need a therapist for this, then I think you should ask about group rates. I find myself doing this often too. I wouldn't go so far as to call it an obsession, but it does happen often.
 
Hi, Miss Shelf.
I often find I need to go back and find a passage to check something - and I too wish there were an easy way of locating it. I find that I can ususally find a passage without too much difficulty though, by picturing where on the page the passage was (upper left hand page, mid right hand page, etc), and also by remembering what came before and what came after. Sometimes, though, the passage is infuriatingly elusive.
Stewart is right, google is a wonderful thing.

ABC - if we're going to have group therapy together, maybe we can do it with Microsoft Meeting as I see you are in Kansas and I am in NY!
 
Oh, I always knew everyone here wasn't "normal"! :D

Libre said:
Hi, Miss Shelf.
I often find I need to go back and find a passage to check something - and I too wish there were an easy way of locating it. I find that I can ususally find a passage without too much difficulty though, by picturing where on the page the passage was (upper left hand page, mid right hand page, etc), and also by remembering what came before and what came after. Sometimes, though, the passage is infuriatingly elusive.
Stewart is right, google is a wonderful thing.

ABC - if we're going to have group therapy together, maybe we can do it with Microsoft Meeting as I see you are in Kansas and I am in NY!
Click to expand...

Libre, I tried memorizing what came before and after it and I can never find it again, or I'm too impatient. I suppose a camera phone would come in handy at times like this-take a picture of the passage! I could always write the page number on a scrap of paper but I'm usually too eager to get on with the book to rummage around for a pencil and paper, and I'm not organized enough to have them by my reading chair. :eek:
 
I sometimes do this. Most often when I'm reading a trade paperback or hardcover book that has what I call "chop cut" pages. I don't know if that's the technical term or not. Not all pages of the novel are cut at exactly the same width and it gives the book a classy vintage look. Often it also makes it difficult to just turn one page at a time. Paul Auster's hardcover of Oracle Night and the trade paperback of Anna Karenina Pevear and Volokhonsky translation are examples of this type of printing.

My page number neurosis is different. I am constantly checking ahead to see how many pages are left in a chapter. Or in the whole book. I am constantly doing the math in my head, "OK the book is 450 pages so I'm nearly halfway through the novel at this chapter" or "132 pages to go". It used to be I just did this with books that weren't so gripping but now my neurosis has crept into all the books I read whether I'm engrossed or just mildly interested. I also do this of course if I am under time constraints while reading to guage if I can make it through the next chapter before my time expires. The greatest problem with this is I sometimes see things I shouldn't when I flip a few pages ahead to see the page of the next chapter. The eyes can spot a name and even a whole passage that may spoil part of the story.
 
Ho boy, yes, reading as an exercise in quantity surveying. This all sounds very familiar to me, ions.
 
ions said:
I am constantly doing the math in my head, "OK the book is 450 pages so I'm nearly halfway through the novel at this chapter" or "132 pages to go".
Click to expand...
Yep--I do this too.


As for the lack of indexes in fiction, that's why I find bootleg texts of books floating around the Internet, and the full-text searching at Amazon, invaluable.
 
i always check how many pages a book is before i read it, unfortunately this means i'm tempted to read the last page.
 
Oh No! I am guilty of all of the above.....but mostly when I read the last page, I have to keep backtracking until it makes sense, and then when I've gone back 6 or 7 pages....aarrrggghhh!

Microsoft Meeting, I believe you said could be used for group therapy? Right.
:rolleyes:

:eek:

:eek:

:D :D
 
Could be a mild-case of OCD, but what do I know? My thing is reading exactly 100 pages. I don't know why, but if I read less than that in any book, I feel disappointed and that I "should" be on page 200....or 300 by the end of the reading experience. It's lessened as I've had kids, but it's still there. Forget about the inner-child, I have a nagging inner-english teacher, standing imperiously over me with a ruler threatening to put it across my knuckles.:D
 
I only check the page numbers occasionally to see if I've skipped ahead a page, but thats generally when I feel the page is too thick to be one or what I'm reading doesn't make sense.

I always check how many pages the book is when I start. I never, ever read the last page, and if I accidentaly pass over something I just pretend I saw nothing. :p I too am constantly thinking about how far through I am, and I check to see how far away the end of the chapter is to see if I can fit in that extra chapter before I have to put it down.
 
I do that occasionally - usually when my mind wanders, and I flip the page and the first word I read doesn't flow with what I've just read. :eek:
 
Writing in books: I write in almost all of my books, which I know isn't an option if you're reading a borrowed text. I usually first read "quality paperbacks" and if I find I really have enjoyed something, then I'll upgrade to a clothbound copy. When I find a great passage in the cloth copy, I go back to the QP and check to see if I'd underlined it intitially, if not, then I mark it, hopefully in a different color ink. This probably sounds lame, but it's what I do. As far as compulsive pagination checks, I'm down in it with everyone else...I'm reading Moby Dick, and the copy our professor assigned has those freaky tissue bible pages.
 
Why else do they put numbers on pages, if not to check and recheck them continually and see how much more to go? Does anyone do anything else with them, except perhaps the publisher to see that they all got into the book? Or perhaps we are intended to use them to check on our counting skills and maybe memorize the numbers we didn't quite get the first time around. :rolleyes: There must be some other use for page numbers, but I can't imagine what. Even these posts have page numbers, so they must be pretty important, like for all those times that you want to read exactly the middle two quarters of a book, or exactly seven-eighths of all the posts. Or maybe every fith one. :confused:
Got me, cuz there's only one thing I do with them, all the time, and every book. :D
Peder
 
I also do this a lot when I'm reading, but not every page - I'm not psychotic! I only do it every second page :D

I also do the whole calculating how many pages are left, too. I guess I am a bit of a nutter - but at least I'm in company ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top