I’m starting this week’s post with another question: how many books do you read at a time? It’s another one of those debates we readers have with each other, the positives and negatives of having a thick stack of ‘currently reading’ on our nightstands. Do we devote all our time, passion and attention to just one book, or do we flit from book to book, dependent on mood or time of day?
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure where I stand on this one. I think I’ve always preferred having just one novel ‘on the go’, so that you don’t lose the overall picture of the story, or get the plot confused with that of another book. I find if you read more than one book at a time, the book that may be less interesting, or perhaps harder to read, can get sidelined and forgotten, meaning it might be months before you finish it – and by then you’ve probably forgotten the characters’ names! At the same time, sometimes you’re just not in the mood for a certain type of book, or you need a lighter read after a long day of work, or you’re reading something for school or book club that you have to go through slowly, and you don’t want to neglect reading other books altogether. Or maybe a book will call out to you from your shelf and you just feel you HAVE to read it, no matter how many other books you’re reading at the time.
Now here’s the thing. For the last half year, maybe more, I have constantly been reading at least three books at a time (usually more like five). It might be a couple non-fiction I’m slowly going through, a poetry collection I take a sample of a few times per week, an audiobook I listen to on the bus, and then my current novel. That’s a lot to read at a time! And usually this is fine – only one novel means I’m still only in one story, and then I can enjoy the non-fiction reads when I feel like it.But lately I keep feeling that disconnect of jumping from book to book. I feel like I’m not truly immersing myself in a work, like I’m not getting their full picture, like I’m not managing to truly connect with each of the books in the way that I could. Maybe there’s the danger in reading so many books at a time – my mind is buzzing with the words of too many authors, without being really grounded in any of the books.
I don’t have a proposed solution for this, nor am I saying that I’m only going to read one book at a time from now on – because all my previous points still stand! I LIKE to dive into my collection of essays, read a poem before I go to bed, start my morning off with a meditation from my devotional. But perhaps this just reveals that out of all the books we may read in the world, however many it is at a time, the one book we should stay rooted in is the Bible. That is a Book that should always have a place on our nightstand, be something we are turning to every day, making time for among our other reads.
Photo: my currently reading stack, not including books for school
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