I have this friend who absolutely *loves* reading. And the only thing she loves more than reading itself is talking about her favorite books for hours on end. The thing is, I *hate* reading. Stories bore me, reading in general feels like a tedious chore and I can never connect to the characters or bring myself to care about what happens to them.
Now, here’s how most of our conversations usually go: Friend starts excitedly telling me about a book she’s read recently. I hear her out and try to smile and nod here and there, but gently remind her that books just aren’t my kind of thing. Friend says something along the lines of “But *this* book is really good, and it’s nothing like the ones I’ve told you about so far!”. Friend then proceeds to explain why and how exactly it’s different from what I’ve read so far by diving deep into the plot itself: she starts giving me an EXTREMELY detailed description of every single character’s appearance, personality and motives, as well as all the worldbuilding aspects of the whole story, explains all the different nuances of the relationships between various characters and pretty much tells me the entire plot in one sitting. This can go on for hours.
Friend then pulls out her phone or kindle and starts making me read various pages from said book, all while closely studying my expression and excitedly awaiting my reaction. Later on, she starts showing me all sorts of fanart and fanfiction related to the book. Again, this goes on for hours.
Every time I try to steer the conversation in a different direction, she immediately changes the subject back to the book she wants to tell me about. She’ll even say “Wait, I’m not done talking yet!” if I try to change the subject too abruptly.
My question is, how can I avoid ending up in situations like this in the future? I don’t want to upset my friend, but these book speeches can go on for hours and hours and at some point it just becomes painfully boring and straight up exhausting to listen to.
2 comments
This isn’t an issue of you needing to learn how to politely shut down the conversation, it’s an issue of your friend being socially deficient.
They’re the ones who need social advice, not you.
The most you can do is more firmly tell them ‘I don’t want to damage our friendship but you’ve been obsessed with your books so much lately you have become difficult to be around because you’ll talk about your books for hours when you know the topic isn’t engaging to me’.
Aw, that’s really sweet and infuriating all at the same time lol Sounds like she really want to have someone to share her interest with and doing all possible to convert you into a reading enthusiast like herself. Try telling her that it just ain’t gonna happen? That no matter what subject, storyline or character, you’re just not into reading books, period?