Reading Multiple Books At Once
Growing up, I was not much of a reader. I read the occasional sci-fi novel and comics, but in a given year, I’d finish maybe three books (odd, given how much I loved writing).
In college, I started reading a bit more, but usually, just the ones assigned to me. It was rare for me to read books in my free time. In my twenties, I tried to become “a reader” but life was busy and motivation was in short supply. During a good year, I’d finish ten books.
However, over the past few years, I’ve been finishing close to fifty books (some years it’s closer to forty given how many massive fantasy tomes I read). So, how did I jump from ten to forty-fifty? It’s not that I have more time… especially now that I have kids. I do more consciously spend my time, but I think the biggest contributor to my increase is reading multiple books at the same time.
But reading is reading. I’ll be just as unmotivated for each book
— Skeptical reader
The first key to having multiple books going at the same time is to diversify the types of books you’re reading. What I realized as I struggled to get through more than a book a month was that some nights I wasn’t in the mood for that one particular book.
Some nights, I want a dark mystery to get into. Others, I want an epic, sprawling world with gigantic battles. Or I’m in the mood for self-help, memoirs, coming of age, etc.
Having different types of books going at the same time means you can almost always pick one that you’re in the mood for. There are times when I will switch books during a single reading session as I realize the first one I picked up isn’t engaging. This has proven to be a lot better than what I used to do: hop on Twitter and doom scroll.
I can’t keep multiple storylines straight in my head. I’ll get too confused.
— Still skeptical reader
I’ve heard this complaint a lot when talking to people about reading multiple books at the same time and it doesn’t make any sense. Those same people will also tell me about the latest episode of Severance, Ted Lasso, Succession, and a dozen other shows with complicated plot lines and characters.
If you can follow multiple TV shows, you can read multiple books without getting confused.
Finally, the last piece that really helped me get over the hump was learning to abandon books when they weren’t holding my attention. This is advice you hear repeated over and over, but still, people struggle with it. The idea of abandoning something that might payoff is hard to swallow.
What I’ve come to realize with DNF’ing books is that it isn’t that a book doesn’t work for me, it’s that a book doesn’t work for me right now. As an example, I was reading Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne — the first book in an epic fantasy series by an author I already liked. I got about two-hundred pages in and put the book down. I just found I never looked forward to reading it.
Fast forward six months. I pick the book up again and devour it. It was one of my favorite books of 2021! But for whatever reason, I wasn’t in the mood for it when I first started it. Had I trudged through it, I would have ruined the book for myself and probably never picked up the sequel (which I also loved).
If you’re skeptical, just give it a try. What do you have to lose? I recommend picking books that are very different from one another and don’t be afraid to put a book down if it isn’t working for you!
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