I Don’t Want to Be BESHIES with Someone Who Doesn’t Read

There, I said it. It’s not a job requirement. It’s not an official rule. But it’s a quiet filter I carry, like a bookmark tucked in my soul.

It’s not that I’m a literary snob. I don’t sit around analyzing postmodern existentialism over red wine. I just need to know you’ve been cracked open by a paragraph before. That a story once rearranged your insides without asking permission. That you’ve disappeared into pages, resurfaced with a lump in your throat, or questioned the world because a single sentence hit too close to home.

See, the people I hold closest, the friends I call mine --- are all readers. Not all of them are bookworms with shelves that groan under the weight of novels. But they all read. They devour stories, inhale poems, chew on essays, and quietly nurse grief over endings that weren’t theirs. We exchange books the way others exchange secrets. 

It’s not about taste. You could read romance, self-help, crime, memoirs, philosophy, manga, or even the back of shampoo bottles. What matters is: you read. You care. You’ve made room in your life for other people’s voices.

I want friends who understand that some silences are sacred--- because we’re both nose-deep in separate worlds, occasionally sipping tea or coffee, letting our fingertips flirt with pages instead of phones.

I want friends who flinch at typos and know the ache of a good ending. Friends who understand why bookstores feel like churches and why lending a book is more intimate than a hug.

If you don’t read, I won’t know what shaped your inner world, because books shape mine. Without that, it feels like we’re walking on different timelines.

I’m not saying you’re less human if you don’t read. I’m saying our rhythms might be too different. I live in underlined sentences and dog-eared pages. I collect quotes like seashells. 

I want to be friends with people who’ve been moved by invisible ink. 

I want friends who have stood in front of bookshelves and felt the world expand. I want the kind of connection that understands silence, subtext, and the weight of a well-written sentence.

It’s not about thinking we're better than anyone. It’s emotional alignment. -sugarquoted