Target. Household goods aisle, somewhere near the candles. 1:13 PM.
I wasn’t supposed to be near the books. I had a list. I had a plan.
But the books were right across the aisle.
Then I saw her. A woman, mid-thirties, two small children buckled into the cart, a box of goldfish crackers being slowly destroyed by the younger one. She was standing in front of the book display with the focused calm of someone defusing a bomb.
She already had two books in the cart. She picked up three more. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t calculate. Just added them with the quiet confidence of a woman who has made peace with her choices.
She was not going to read all five of those books. I knew this because I am her. I went home with one more book I didn’t need and couldn’t stop thinking about why we do this.
Here’s the thing about being a pharmacist who writes fantasy romance: I’m wired to ask why. So when I kept noticing my own reader habits and couldn’t explain them, I did what any analytically-minded introvert would do. I started investigating. And then, because I figured I wasn’t the only one, I started writing it up to share.
That became a little side project called A Scientist Explains Readers. Four issues in (over on Substack) and here’s what I’ve found on us:
We buy books we’ll never read.
See above. The woman in Target. Also me. Also, probably, you.
My scientist brain says: Dopamine fires when you see the book, not when you read it. Future-you, who your brain completely believes in, is going to have a rainy Saturday and a full cup of tea and nowhere to be. Future-you is a liar.
But here’s what I actually think is happening: every unread book on your shelf is a vote for who you want to be. You’re not buying books. You’re buying hope. → Full post here
We lie about “one more chapter.”
Seven years ago one of my pharmacy staff came in late, hollowed out tired. She’d been reading Fifty Shades of Grey with a phone flashlight under the covers while her husband slept next to her.
She was responsible for medications and people’s actual lives.
My scientist brain says: your prefrontal cortex is already compromised by midnight, your body is treating the plot like a real event, and your brain cannot rest on an unfinished story.
But that still doesn’t explain the flashlight. What I think is actually happening: she found something worth being tired for. → Full post here
We cry over people who don’t exist.
I finished a book last week and cried. Ugly, inconvenient crying, alone in my house, over people who are not real.
I am not a crier. That book broke something in me.
My scientist brain says: your brain builds genuine attachment to fictional characters — same neural pathways, same grief response. An unexpected death hits like an ambush.
But I don’t think we’re crying for the character. I think we’re crying for the real thing they were quietly representing to us. → Full post here
We reread books we already know by heart.
My daughter has done this her whole life. I didn’t get it. Then Onyx Storm came out and I reread two long, complicated books before starting it — and caught things I’d completely missed the first time. Details that mattered. A character I’d written off. The whole architecture of how the story was built.
My scientist brain says: first reads are survival mode. Second reads, that work is done and your brain gets to actually notice things.
But I think rereaders aren’t going back to the book. They’re going back to who they were when it first hit them. (My daughter doesn’t need to know she was right.) → Full post here
If you recognized yourself in any of that, the newsletter is free. I’ll keep explaining us readers to ourselves.
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Followed you on Substack. 😁
Thank you! I followed you back. 🙂 Nice to see you over there.