When I have money I buy books, and if there is any left over I buy food and clothing.
— Erasmus
A character who just loves to read books. Can be smart or just of average intelligence, may or may not wear glasses, and possibly have few interests other than reading. Expect them to put off doing stuff with friends in order to read sometimes, or for them to have few friends because they make a point to ignore or avoid others for the purpose of sitting down in a secluded area and indulging in their hobby of reading.
Possesses the
Charles Atlas Superpower of being able to not only read and walk at the same time but to read and navigate through a maze of disaster and mayhem (car wrecks, floods, runaway rabid dogs, the debris of a
Chase Scene such as a flying
Fruit Cart, falling meteors) without a scratch.
May be a
Hot Librarian or a
Badass Bookworm.
Examples
- Drowtales: Ariel
is something of an avid reader as a small child but later becomes a Black Magician Girl. Yafein looks the part, but it's not canon whether he loves books.
- Roddy McDowell as The Bookworm in the 1966 Batman TV series.
- The Bookworms in The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids (and the sequel, Skinny Malinky Leads the War for Kidness).
- Klaus in A Series Of Unfortunate Events loves to read.
- Not just to read, but to research, which often comes in handy because his encyclopedic knowledge, combined with Violet's ability to improvise inventions and Sunny's teeth, allows them to escape from Count Olaf's clutches.
- An old educational PC game called Word Rescue had a character named Benny Bookworm. Yes, he had glasses. In the sequel, "Math Rescue", he became "Benny Butterfly" (even though caterpillars become butterflies).
- Nodoka of Mahou Sensei Negima, to the point that she has the nickname "Honya", (Japanese for "bookshop"). And indeed, she works in a library and can often be seen carrying enormous stacks of books around.
- Also Yue. Funnily enough, while she loves reading, she hates studying, or at least, studying that doesn't involve magic.
- Roald Dahl's Matilda loves to read books, much to the horror of her horrible parents.
- Belle from Disney's Beauty And the Beast.
- Lisa Simpson.
- Hermione Granger from Harry Potter.
- As can be guessed by the name of both the series and the main character, Yomiko Readman of Read Or Die, who has a drug-like addiction to reading. Give her a book and she'll be lost in her own little world.
- Vivio Takamachi of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, which is the reason why she became a title librarian of the Infinity Library even though she's still in grade school.
- Any Harvest Moon girl who hangs out at a library will inevitably be one of these.
- Sheiska from Full Metal Alchemist is this to insane levels. Not only does she fit all the standard requirements for being a Bookworm, she also seems to like reading for the sake of reading. Including cookbooks. More importantly, she can even recall books perfectly, such that when she made a copy (From memory) of said cookbook for Ed, he was still able to decode the secret message in it.
- Raven of Teen Titans
- To be fair, most of them are probably ancient tomes filled to the brim with powerful magic spells that could make her even more devastating in battle.
- Jo of Little Women
- Mary Bennett of Pride And Prejudice
- See The Twilight Zone episode "Time Enought At Last"
- Mitsuru Kirijo from Persona 3 is rarely seen without a book in hand when in the common room.
