Bookish Chat About: Multi-Reading

Just a quickie today pals.

I wanted to have a brief chat about multi-reading. Reading more than one book at once. (I don’t know why I felt the need to explain that to you).

Multi-reading was something I would have never done in a million years if you were asking the ‘me’ from around a year or so ago.

I used to watch certain booktubers talking about the multiple books they were reading at any one time and think ‘u ok hun?’

However, since becoming a book blogger I have found that I am able to multi-read fairly easily. It’s necessity that initially pushed me to give it a whirl. When you have a number of books that you have committed to reading by a certain date and only a limited number of reading hours in a typical day you have to get creative.

Now I’m not saying it comes naturally. It very much doesn’t. But it is becoming more and more ‘the norm’. I would also say that 4 books at a time would be my absolute limit and one of those would need to be an audiobook (another new habit of mine, but we’ll discuss that another time).

There are certain self imposed stipulations I put upon myself with this multi-reading lark. The books have to have different settings and time periods. Ideally I would have one historical fiction and one contemporary/dystopian. It also helps considerably if one of the books is non-fiction. I don’t think I could do 3 fiction, UNLESS……one is a short story collection.

Now.

Here we change the rules again.

Hang on in there!

Short story collections are an entirely different beast.

If I was to count the number of short story collections I am currently reading then we would be up to around 15 books. Therefore I don’t really count them in my ‘currently reading’. The reason for this is that I dip in and out of short stories, usually when I’m in the bath. I pick up whichever collection I’m in the mood for reading and just go with it. However, I could put that book back on the shelf and not pick it up again for several months.

A different reading environment also helps with my multi-reading. I take one book on the bus journey to work and this also will be the book I read during my lunch hour. Rarely will I take that book out of my tote bag and read it at home. The only time I would consider doing this would be if I had literally a few pages left to finish.

I also have a book next to my chair downstairs and a book on the shelf above my bed. Differentiating which room I read which book in can help with keeping the books separate in my head.

It’s not all hard and fast rules though. Sometimes a book will blow me away and I will forsake all others to get that one finished. Sometimes I might need to get a book finished for an upcoming blog tour, therefore that bad boy will come to work with me, come and join me in the bath and see me to sleep in bed at night.

I have heard various stand points about multi-reading and I know it’s not for everyone. I absolutely get that. But what I don’t necessarily agree with is the idea that you cannot possibly be concentrating on all of the books equally.

I would counter this with the idea that having a choice of books available to you to pick up depending on your mood or circumstances is much better than forcing yourself to read the one book you’re currently reading when maybe you’re not in the mood for it. But this is of course just my opinion and what works well for me.

So.

The upshot of this post is this.

I multi-read.

Do you?…..

See you soon.

Amanda – Bookish Chat xx