Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. To the best of my knowledge, and my Google search results, I just made that word up. Multilegerophile: Someone who loves to read multiple books at once. People who paid more attention in Latin class might have a better term for it, but I’m going with this one. On the sidebar of my blog there is a display of my “Currently Reading” shelf on Goodreads. As I write this, there are eight books on that shelf. How many books are too many to read at once? And how long does a book sit idly on the shelf before one is no longer “currently reading” it? I am not sure there are any “right” answers to these questions, but I would like to discuss some of my tactics for reading multiple books.
A Book in Every Room
This was my strategy before I had a smart phone, and it continues to this day. I surround myself with books everywhere. It may take me a long time to finish a short book, such as Saga Volume 2, because it is next to my chair and I don’t find myself sitting there very often. Or it could be that I usually watch television when I am sitting there. I have a (work-related) book in my office. There is a book in the car. There is a book in the bathroom. I try to place the books I am reading in prominent locations because I tend to get distracted, especially if there is not a book club meeting or some other deadline to prompt me to finish the book. Library due dates only help a little. You can thank my past due fines for helping to keep the library lights on. There should always be a book, or several, within arms reach.
A Book on Every App
How many books can a person read at once? I do a lot of math for my job, so forgive me if I answer with a math word problem. For me, the correct answer is: Take the number of rooms in this person’s house, add the number of cars and offices, then increase by the number of reading apps on this person’s phone.
Here are all the ways I use my phone to read:
- iBooks – ebooks and audiobooks
- iPod – audiobooks that I imported from CDs when my laptop still had a disc drive
- Files/Safari – I will lump these together for all the stuff I read as .pdf or online text
- Overdrive/Libby- library apps for ebooks and audiobooks
- Audible – yup, I finally subscribed
- Kindle – free ebooks as part of my hotel rewards program and frequent insanely cheap deals
- Nook – thank you gift cards
- Librivox – free audiobooks of texts in the public domain read by volunteers, not always the highest quality, but these helped me get an English degree
With this many reading apps, it can be a challenge to remember which book I am reading or listening to in which app. I have the same problem with any television series I am watching if it is not on Netflix. I might open the Hulu app six months later and remember I was watching Marvel’s Runaways. The Goodreads shelf helps me remember what I am supposed to be reading.
Short-term vs Long-term Reads
Some books stay on my Currently Reading shelf for a long time. Often this is because I own the book, and it gets pushed to the back-burner while I pile through books as they come available from the library. Two weeks is not very long when you are a multilegerophile, but that is all the library app gives me. Many of the books I request have to be put on hold, and then several will become available all at once. That means I have to prioritize those books or risk waiting to finish the book until it becomes available again. If I own the book in paper or digital form, it often takes longer to read because I have longer to read it.
Other books require more time because they give me work to do. I have been working through The Artist’s Way for a couple of years. It is supposed to take 12 weeks… I have been reading it for more than 12 months, but I still feel like an active participant, so I am not willing to remove the book from my virtual shelf. These long-savoring books are a nice contrast to the audiobooks that I am listening to on 2x speed trying to beat the expiration dates. Balance, y’all.
Daily Readers
I should note that the books on my Currently Reading shelf are not the only books I am currently reading. Each morning I read pages from a couple of different “daily readers” as part of my morning routine. One of these is the aforementioned book-in-the-bathroom, so don’t worry about my… umm… health, the readings are very short. Since the best case scenario is to take a whole year to read those books, I haven’t put them on my Goodreads shelf. Once I feel like I have read every page, I might add these to get credit, but for now they are not included.
Too many?
So how many is too many? I seem to cycle between 4 and 8 books on my CR shelf. Having eight books on the shelf right now makes me feel a little frazzled. There are 38 minutes remaining in my current audiobook. I can have that one checked off by the end of the day, but the trick will be NOT to start another audiobook as soon as that one is finished. But I can listen to audiobooks in the car and I can’t read a regular book while driving, so I really have to start the next one, don’t I? Argh! Do you see my dilemma? Then I have books for book club but other books that I should probably finish first because I have been reading them longer. I should probably, definitely, (maybe) not start any more ebooks or paper books until finish at least one of those. Yeah, I can do that. Maybe I will finish Saga Volume 2. Yes, then I can start another graphic novel! Wait.
I think my maximum is 4 at a time. Usually, that means there is one I may never actually finish. Dances with Dragons took me a year to read while I read other books. I generally have a series I’m re-reading (the past few years, that was Discworld and Callahan’s) that I will set aside in favor of book club books. And I always have something on Kindle as a backup for if I’m stuck somewhere for a while and need something to read. And sometimes I will just pull out a graphic novel while I’m in the middle of a couple of other books. It’s my “Oooh shiny!” thing to read on impulse.
Right now, I’m taking my tablet from bedroom to tub, and using my phone for kindle when I’m out, because I have two ebooks to read before Capricon in 3 weeks.