Do you focus on reading one book at a time from beginning to end or have a stack of books you are reading at the same time? My current reading stack on my nightstand is
You will notice the books are a mix of fiction and non-fiction, various genres, and alternating intensity. I find I enjoy jumping from book to book depending on my mood, how awake I am, how much time I have to read, and which one is interesting me the most currently. Love this quote from an author and avid reader.
I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.
Virginia Woolf, The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, 1923-1928
I feel the same way! Yeah, there are the questions of “how can you keep track of the various stories or topics?”, “don’t you get confused?”, “how do you ever finish a book?”, and “why not just finish one then start another?”. For me, it just works to be reading more than one book at a time. Yeah, sometimes one book will draw me in and I will finish it quickly but even then I will often take a break for a day or two to read another book before returning to the one I am intensely reading.
So what is this reading of multiple books? The term most often used for this is polyreading or poly-reading.
Polyreading
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Polyreading
The act of reading two or more books at once.
Various studies say the benefits of reading more than one book at a time include increased interest in reading, fitting your emotional state rather than forcing yourself to read a book that doesn’t fit your mood, and improving your memory keeping track of all the books.
What about you? Do you read multiple books at a time? Why do you like to do that? If you prefer reading one at a time, why does that work for you better? Also, feel free to share what is on your reading pile at the moment.