If you spend more than five minutes in /r/whatsthatbook you'll end up

[conuly]

asking somebody "When did you read this book", and there are two annoying answers to this.

The first is "When I was younger". Yeah, no shit, everything you have already done you have done, by definition, when you were younger. (And if you want to avoid this answer you'll have to consistently use the somewhat silly phrase "calendar year" to ask this question. Annoyingly, the equally silly phrase "age in years" does very little to stop people from giving me their year/grade/stage at school instead, so I have to say "Age in years - that's your age, not year/grade/stage at school!" which makes me sound really pushy for no reason. There's a reason!)

The second is "Oh, it doesn't matter, the book was at least ten years old when I got it!"

And then you have to go back and explain to them that a book that was ten years old in 1960 is much older than one that was ten years old in 2020, so please - help us help you. Like, would it kill them to just answer the question? I genuinely have no idea why they do this. Why do people do this? Just, why?

Comments

[calimac]

I am reminded of the man who said his mother used to tell him that he was too thin but now that he weighs too much, but there was never a time when she said he was just right.

[conuly]

Or the one about the man whose mother bought him two sweaters for christmas/hanukkah/his birthday, and when he put one of them on to please her immediately demanded to know what was wrong with the other one!