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Permalink Reply by Todd Edward Dillard on July 10, 2012 at 11:20am

Anecdote:

Years ago, I dated this girl. We were pretty serious, and, after I met her dad, in a bid I think to impress me, he told me about the one book he'd ever read. He didn't remember the title, but it was some sort of pulp mystery/horror, and he said he liked it, but wasn't impressed enough to read again. He was a fairly simple guy: worked the same job, lived in the same house for his entire life, married his high school sweetheart, etc. I wouldn't say these attributes in of themselves constitute the opposite of a book lover, but I suspect they were all symptoms pointing to one. Here was a guy who was entirely content not experiencing anything new, convinced he was capable of drawing vast and correct conclusions after minimal exposure to pretty much anything. 

I think for a while I was offended (why tell a writer their passion wasn't worth it? It seemed like macho alpha-mal BS to me) and my girlfriend was horrified. But after a few years and a break up, I realized he wasn't being offensive. He was just content, and didn't need anything else in his life to be happy. Which is to say, I suspect a book lover is, by nature, not content... though they're more content than us writers ;)