One Book At A Time - Musings From The Bookface

I often play Jenga in my spare time, not so much because I enjoy the game as for the practice it gives me. The delicate touch required to gently extract one rectangular object from beneath another perched precariously in a perilously tall tower is I think a necessary skill for any real lover of books, as without it we would be unable to navigate the vast piles of books that form our dreaded (and beloved) 'To-Read’ list.

My pile is actually relatively small at the moment, a fiction novel given to me last Christmas, a study on Ceasar’s campaign in Gaul, several volumes of crime fiction, 2 folio prize nominees, the last book in a series I got into a few years ago, a couple of biographies, and a handful of books on Indian mythology. Actually ignore my initial statement, my pile is massive, how on earth am I going to read all these books before Christmas and the inevitable deluge of new releases?

Reading the answers that Joanna Trollope gave this month I think I have a solution- the answer is to read them all at the same time! Joanna lists a pile of books more than equal to my own, and adds that she is halfway through most of them. Now this is an utterly alien concept to me- how can you start one book before you finish another? How would I keep the characters, plots, and places straight in my head?  How does Detective Inspector Frost not end up solving Ceasar’s murder, or Elizabeth Bennett avoid coming face to face with the fearsome Ghatotkacha? There was a good discussion on this over at the Guardian a while back, which shows a definite split between those who can, and can’t, read more than one book at once.

When I was much younger I read in this way, scattering myself across countless titles and yet somehow not getting them muddled, perhaps my shortened attention span was able to retain who and what was happening better than my older self can.  My current method, one book at a time, slowly working my way through the pile in no particular order, bears little relation to how I read as a child, so perhaps it’s time I spread myself out a bit and got a few on the go at once, Book Riot even released this helpful ‘How to’ video on book polygamy. You never know, maybe I’ll get that pile down faster than I thought.

What sort of reader are you, do you spread your attention across many delights at once? Or are you focused on one until you have devoured it completely, ready for the next literary meal? 

- The Muser