Even if you are the most avid reader, you will, at some point, get to a stage in life when you will need something “else” to do. And if you are as obsessed with books as I am, you will search for hobbies that keep you close to your passion in life: books.
Below, I have listed 21 bookish hobbies that aren’t reading but keep you connected to books. You will still touch and work with books or live in the bookish world, but just in a different way. Make sure you write your favorite ones down somewhere or just save the post to your Pinterest hobby board.
I have categorized this list of bookish hobbies into a few different chunks, just because it makes sense. We start with bookish things you can collect.
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Collecting Bookish Stuff
1. Collecting Bookplates
A bookplate is that piece of paper you sometimes see on the inside of the front cover of a vintage book. It tells you who the previous owner of the book was. Often, you will find that the book belonged to someone famous. Once, I found a whole collection of vintage 1700s books that belonged to a high-ranking officer in the Royal Navy. It made me feel like I’d traveled through time because I was leafing through the same pages that officer must have leafed through as well, just a few centuries ago.
If this hobby idea sounds interesting to you, there is a big online community of bookplate collectors right here. You can collect bookplates that belong to a specific region or decade, have a specific element in them, or just anything with a bookplate in it.
2. Collecting Books with Inscriptions
An inscription tells a story of love, encouragement and care. You can collect these stories in your own library. Also, you don’t need to collect vintage books only. There are so many newer books with wonderful and beautiful inscriptions, and you can collect those. Sourcing them could happen through thrift stores, garage sales, or even Facebook Marketplace.
3. Collecting Bookmarks
I often find bookmarks in the books I borrow from the library and I keep them for myself. You pick the rules here. You could collect interesting and fun new bookmarks or second-hand bookmarks that catch your eye. This is a slow hobby that doesn’t ask for too much of your time, so you can still read every second of your day and have this hobby when the opportunity arises.
4. Collect Special Editions
This might be a no-brainer and it is also a very popular hobby. If you have a favorite author or genre, it makes sense to get obsessed with finding the perfect special editions of their books. There are people who read books on Kindle only and then buy special editions of their favorite ones for their libraries.
Slow Bookish Hobbies
5. Notebooks/Journals Binding
Creating your own notebooks and binding them yourself is like a ritual, and you get so immersed and obsessed with it that you forget everything else exists. I used to do this many years ago, and I still miss it. It brought me so much joy to pick the papers, find the perfect cover (which could be anything from a cereal box to an actual vintage book cover) and then bind everything together. I also made a few journals for friends and family, and they all loved them.
6. Book Repair/Restoration
This hobby requires more skills and has a bit of a learning curve, but is a rewarding hobby that could help save old books that somebody didn’t care for properly. Book restoration could mean many things – from simply dusting the book to spine repair, page cleaning and even rebinding. It is a time-consuming, slow process that gives back just as much love as you put into it.
7. Cataloging Your Books
If you have a good-sized library or a few bookshelves filled with books, this could be a fun new hobby for you. Cataloging books isn’t just a one-time process. You could have different catalogs for the same 200 books, each one of them categorized by differently.
Here are a few examples: categorizing books in alphabetical order (the most logical way), by genre, by how much you liked them (from most to least), by the time period the story is set in, by number of book pages, and more. Your imagination is the only limit here.
Bookish Crafts
8. Painting/Spraying Book Edges
The idea of this hobby is to grab a book and turn it into a craft project. Spraying or painting the book edges is easy if you are a natural at painting, but it can be just as fun if you aren’t. You can do just color-matching, which is finding the book cover colors and spraying the edges in those colors. You could also go for drawing specific scenes or finding cheap templates that would help you achieve the results you’re after.
9. Making Themed Bookmarks
Here, every book has its own bookmark that is created by you, and that matches the mood, genre, and vibe of the book you just finished reading. You can do it for your favorite books only, and you can create as many different bookmarks as you want. Do them by hand or in Canva, and then print them out.
10. Create Book-Inspired Collage
Once you finish a book you are absolutely obsessed with, create a collage about it. It could be physical – in a scrapbook where every page is dedicated to a book you’ve read. But it could also be digital, on Pinterest, and you could have a different board for each book or one board with many sections inside, each for a book.
Reflective Bookish Hobbies
11. Creating Playlists for Books
You know how some of the books you’ get ‘ve gotten lately have a playlist at the very beginning? The author usually chooses songs that match the vibe of the scenes inside the book, but you might have even better suggestions. Also, some books simply don’t come with those playlists. This could be your next fun bookish hobby. Start with your favorite books and go from there. Create a Spotify playlist and then share it with your book besties.
12. Writing Essays About Books
This one requires you to be a bit of a nerd, I know. But it is such a good hobby that supports your analytical thinking and helps you formulate opinions and defend them better. It is literally a life skill if you master it. Probably not every book would have enough conflict to it to encourage you to write a full essay, but most will. Also, when I say “essay”, don’t imagine a dry 5-page paper. This is all about extracting the best (or worst) from the book and formulating your thoughts in a one-page essay.
13. Found Poetry/Blackout Poetry
If you love reading or writing poems, this one is your new bookish hobby idea. Find an old book or take a photo of a page of a book you’d like to use and print it. Then skim through the text and find different words and phrases you could combine in a new way – meaning, create a poem out of it. You can read more about it right here if it sounds fun enough to try.
14. Journaling in Discarded Books
This is exactly how it sounds: find discarded books (vintage or new), and give them a new purpose. Use them as journals. Write in the margins around the text or glue scraps of paper here and there and write on them. Some people might raise their eyebrows at this way of using books (thinking it is destroying them), but it is either that or they go to the landfill to be destroyed. I like it better if they get used in some way.
15. Writing Fan Fiction
You must have at least a few books or book series you’re kind of obsessed with (ACOTAR, Harry Potter, GOT). If you also have the desire to create new stories with the same characters, writing fan fiction is the perfect hobby for you. Yes, you become a writer, and you work within the original author’s world, but you give it your own twist. Fan fiction is extremely popular right now, and you might find a few followers in the process. But you could also write it for yourself only and never share it with anyone else if you aren’t comfortable doing so.
16. Reviewing Books
This hobby idea reminds me of the one where you write essays for the books, but here we tweak it a bit. It is a very popular bookish activity. Just open Goodreads to see how important good reviews are. There are people who spend days crafting a proper review for every book they read. With time, this could turn you into a book influencer, especially if your reviews are packed with good reasoning and fairness to the books and their authors.
Bringing Bookish Worlds to Life
17. Create Miniature Libraries
This is a craft you can easily get obsessed with. Creating miniatures is fun and tickles a part of the brain that makes you want to do more of it. You could create the library of your dreams on a miniature scale. You could also take it a step further and create different libraries from different book worlds.
For example, how would a library in Hogwarts look if you were its architect? How about a sci-fi library in space? How would Jane Austen’s library look? Yep, I can see the wheels in your head spinning and that’s exactly what makes this hobby so cool – it brings the vision in your head to life.
18. Recreating Rooms from Books
Most books have detailed descriptions of rooms or buildings that are key to the stories. Your hobby would be to create a miniature of that room or house. What is your favorite book? What do you imagine your favorite character’s room looks like? How does it feel to be inside? Whether it’s classic English literature or a fantasy world, you would need to source or craft the miniature furniture, fabrics, and props.
19. Book-Inspired Photography
If you love taking photos and photography is one of your interests, combine it with books. Create book photo sessions with props in the book. Treat each photo session as a project and take your time to source items that reflect and complement the story. Play with the idea, change stuff up, and create an Instagram account that could hold the results of your hard work.
Exploring Books Beyond the Page
20. Follow a Literary Trail in Nature
A few days ago I watched a YouTuber visit Haworth – a hilltop village in West Yorkshire where the Brontë sisters lived and wrote their stories. And I thought, what a wonderful hobby idea. Not applicable to every book, I know, but it still deserves a spot here. Walk in the shoes of the authors or their characters. Visit places from the books you love. Alternatively, visit your favorite author’s writing places, follow their trails in nature, see what inspired them to create stories.
21. Watch Film Adaptations
Yes, this is a hobby if you turn it into one. There are hundreds of film adaptations of loved books. You could read the book and then watch the film, note the differences and form an opinion on which one was better, the strengths and the gaps. It is a fun weekend hobby you could turn into a family thing, if you want.
Final Thoughts
I hope you enjoyed this list of bookish hobbies that aren’t reading but still give books the main spot. My favorite ones are collecting bookmarks, journal binding, and journaling in discarded books. Also, I have put cataloging books on my to-do list, just because I really want to experiment with it.
I hope you have a favorite idea as well. If you are struggling to pick your next hobby to try, start with the easiest idea – the one you could go for today, and see if it fits your personality.
Blogger, dreamer, procrastinator, and lover of everything soul-touching. My mission is to make you laugh, provoke your thoughts, light up your day and inspire you to fall in love with life and yourself.
