It drives me nuts when i get a new book and someone reads it 1st. iin?

I have a pet peeve with books. It's generally with new books, but actual, unread newness isn't the only variable. It also occurs when it's a book I'm very excited about and I've just borrowed it from the library, or if I've borrowed it from someone else and it looks new and untouched. Broadly, any book I'm excited about that feels like fresh, virgin territory for me.

It drives me crazy when I've just acquired a new book and someone else starts reading it. Especially if they then finish it first.

It's not really an ego thing. I mean, yes, it irritates me if they have more time than me or read more quickly, but that's not at the heart of it. If they got their own copy, while I'd still feel a little stung at my inability to keep up, I could still have my special experience.

It's not about not having access to the book. The feeling persists, even if the other person hands the book back to me when I want to read it. I can get to the story whenever I want.

It's about my relationship with the book. Books--good books, at least--are people to me. Bad books aren't dumb, bad people, they just get knocked down to object-hood. Unless it's extraordinarily sumptuous, I can get a bad book wet and not feel bad about it. I can get food on it, mark the pages, bend the spine, no problem. Good books, however, are sacrosanct.

And when I get a good book for the first time, I get this intense feeling of anticipation, the feeling of being at the beginning of a very special relationship between me and the book-person. I'm going to have such a wonderful time reading this book! I have the entire book still ahead of me, untouched! This book is going to divulge its secrets to me, and, while I have it, to me alone!

And then someone else starts reading my book. I feel sad. I feel betrayed. I feel hurt. That special relationship is gone, now. I can still enjoy the book, but THEY'VE HAD IT FIRST. They got that special relationship. I watched them experiencing the book, and I saw the book tell THEM its secrets FIRST. Now it's sullied, and I'm not the Reader in Chief anymore. I'm just another person pawing through a book. A book that probably has fingerprints on it now, and won't quite stay flat anymore--if it was new in the first place.

I mentioned that this can happen with library books or books I've borrowed from other people. Obviously, these books have been read before, but I haven't seen this particular copy being read; it's out of sight and out of mind. The clincher is watching someone else read my copy--I get jealous. It's a little form of torture. Not quite like watching your partner have sex with someone else. More like watching someone you're painfully infatuated with make out with someone else, and then start dating them instead of you.

Is this just me?