Right now I have six going, it all depends on the mood I'm in but if one of them really takes me, I read it through.
Right now I have six going, it all depends on the mood I'm in but if one of them really takes me, I read it through.
I'm currently reading four. I do that all the time though. Usually read one chapter of each a day, so I finish them all in good time.
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Just found my epitaph.
To OP:
I try to read only one or two books at a time. Sometimes like Mortalterror I end up starting a bunch of books (4-5 or more), usually at times when I'm not sure what I feel like reading. I eventually settle on something and focus on that one book. I tried a process where I would read one book of poetry and one novel at a time--the novel would take precedence, but I would make sure to read a couple of poems each day--but that didn't work for me. I tried doing the same with a novel and a short story collection. Now I'm trying to do this with novel/literary work and a non-fiction work.
Novel = Crime and Punishment
Non-fiction = Handbook of Ancient Greek Art
I read a couple of chapters of C&P and one section of a chapter in the Handbook today, but let's see what happens when I actually have to work and don't get to sit around all day and read.
Wow, really? 30 books at a time?!
Last edited by Drkshadow03; 09-15-2009 at 11:03 PM.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
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I tend to be the same. I've stopped in the middle of a couple of larger novels to read something else. For example, i put 'Moby Dick' aside for a while and read 'The Good Soldier' ( though by the end of the latter i was about ready to board the Pequod myself just to be rid of Ford Madox Ford).
Is there a limit on the amount of time one can leave before returning to an unfinished novel?
20 or so, but that includes coursework, which is alone 10 - but then again, most books I read I finish within the day I start, so it is a little bit troublesome to come up with a real number.
Ever since high school I have always been in the habbit of reading several books at one time. A lot of people think I am crazy for doing it, and don't know how I keep all my stories straight, but it has always worked for me, and I like the varity.
Currently I am reading 22 books.
10 that I acutally read on a day to day basis.
And 10 that I rotate
and a couple that I have started but read irregularly
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
I try to read only one book at a time. But sometimes I take short breaks from a book to read a bit of poetry or essays for a day or so. With school though it is different. I read at least 15 books for classes. That does not count books for research papers are excerps from books that are requried for classes. There isn't a set period of time that has to go by before a book must be started over. It dosent really matter. Most books cant be read anyway. We find enough of what we like.
"bruised reed" Isaiah 42:3
I tend to have several books on the go at the same time. I'll read, say, a chapter or a scene in one then decide if I want to 'have a change'. I usually do - not because I'm bored, but I've had some fruit and now I want some ice cream. I find mixing genres is best - having a play, novel, essays, poetry... all up in the air at once is great...
I find having two really heavy books going at the same time is a real strain. From experience, I wouldn't recommend reading the Iliad and the Old Testament at the same time. Fortunately, the very greatest aren't heavy. Reading Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Tolstoy at the same time is superb! A scene, an essay, a chapter - the best way to start or end the day...
Yes mixing genres works best I find, I tend to do that, though it just depends on what I am reading. I also tend to do a lot of "dipping" into works I have already read. This had two advantages, firstly, for pure pleasure of reading bits of the stuff I enjoy, and secondly, as an aid for memory retention of the work. I am always dipping into Shakespeare and Milton for example, there's probably not a fortnight that goes by that I don't dip into Shakespeare or Milton, but it works just as well for anything. Pulling a novel off the shelf and reading the first chapter for the sheer hell of it is cool too. I often like to read these aloud too, especially the very best stuff - Milton in particular seems to demand to be spoken out loud, as does most poetry, but especially Milton.
I know. It's weird. It's like I'm afraid I'll miss something if I don't try them all. When I watch television I'll change the channel, even when I like what I'm viewing, just to see what else is on. Let me look at the stacks I've got out now:
The Storm and other Russian Plays, Tacitus Annals and Histories, Livy's Early History of Rome, Herodotus The Histories, The Good Soldier Svejk, The Origin of Species, Utopia, The Praise of Folly, Germinal, Sentimental Education, Works of Sallust, Notes From Underground, The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Bacon's Essays and New Atlantis, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Our Town, The Golden Bough, Nicomachean Ethics, St. Augustine's Confessions. Then I've got books on my computer. I have an edition of Cicero's De Oratore bookmarked where I left off. I have downloaded copies of Death's Jest Book, The Confessions of an English Opium Eater, text versions of Middlemarch and Nostromo, Virgil's Georgics, Juvenal's Satires. The Shahnameh is one of my ongoing projects. I just had to return copies of Oblomov, Varieties of Religious Experience, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Salammbo.
Keep in mind that I don't finish some books for years at a time. Most of this stuff is going back to the library unread and not for the first time. I don't read as fast as you, so if I stick with Boswell's Life of Johnson, like I'm doing now, it'll take me at least the rest of the month and I won't get anything else done.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
I usually stick to 2 or 3 titles at a time, sometimes rereads, 2 or 3 at a time, often surprised at what I don't remember, like with Wilkie Collins. I at least believe I read The Woman In White in the 80's, but I remember the editor's introduction with more clarity than the actual text. Why I don't know, since the fellow is at least a master builder, if not the equal to Dickens or James.
Sometimes, as mortal suggests, if I get bogged down in dense premises, I stop for awhile and try later, and I have two Foucault texts, one anthropology study, and Jared Diamond's 90's sentiments on evolution which are in the *bog* slot, though I am going to return to The Foucault Reader momentarily. I remember Drk had that on his read list.
Depends. During school time often three. One for my personal pleasure and one each for my literature teachers. Sometimes I'll start two or three books and see which one grabs me at the time.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
I still haven't figured out how to read a different book with each eye.
about 3 books and maybe some books of poetry too.
I hope death is joyful, and I hope I'll never return -Frida Khalo
If I seem insensitive to what you are going through, understand it's the way I am- Mr. Spock
Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing 'evil'–and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil. - Baudelaire
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