this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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Books. I own probably a thousand physically, have hundreds of thousands of PDFs and epubs between my laptop and NAS.
The superpower is that I have a book “sense.” I know about where each book I own is - my shelves are not organized in any meaningful way, because I’m ADHD and will just pull one out to look at something and reshelve it. I’m not at home right now, but I can imagine my shelves and stacks in my head - can tell you where Palestine and the Palestinians or The Forty Days of Musa Dagh or the beautiful English translation of the 左传 or House Made of Dawn or the book on Scottish coins i thrifted a few days ago all are.
I can look at almost any given strangers bookshelf and recognize/have read at least one of their books. I navigate libraries by feel and don’t need to look up books.
I also read inhumanly fast I think, and have somewhat of an eidectic memory for text. It’s been almost twenty years since I read The Great Gatsby but a student brought it up and I was able to do a 45 minute lecture on it, with quotes from memory.
I’m also prodigious at sex. I’ll read more books in a week than most do over their life, and I’ll also fuck more people in that week than most do over their life.
That's a double-brag, wow. (Very impressive)
Being a slut is a superpower now?
Let’s just say I put the “power” in “power bottom.” ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I organized my books by color long before learning some people hate that.
To me, it communicates that you prioritize the aesthetics of the books over their contents. (That hackneyed phrase, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ I think is part of the “hatred” people express towards this choice.)
There are def books to be collected because of their aesthetics - I have a gorgeous Taschen on the Crusades, a Maimonides text in Hebrew (which I can’t read), or very old English translations of Chinese texts. I’m very jealous of people who have things like complete Harvard Everyman’s or lots of vintage Penguins. Or people who just love Moby Dick so much that they’ll fill shelves with Dicks (Along color - Penguin put out a beautiful blue edition that I still can remember holding and debating on buying back in 2018.)
I don’t get “hating” the way someone else chooses to collect or organize their books. (And I’d have no room to stand on, because some of my shelves have more stacked on them than they have in them, it’s chaotic) I do “judge” people on the books they have and show, because the books you read and consider important are pretty easy ways to see what ideas have influenced your mind.
I love the opportunities for conversation that looking at a bookshelf brings, because I suck at small talk. It gives me a deeper understanding of a person - I can pick up a few niche interests and broader themes with a quick look.
Not true, though! I just think it makes my shelves look nicer. I know where everything is, like OP says.