Writing Reading multiple books?

[Roxie Faye]

[color=#9933ff]I was just curious, do you read one book at a time, or can you read several books at once?

I can read several at once, although I know some people can only read one at a time.

I'm currently reading two books for school, two mangas (of different series), and two for reading at my leisure.

I'm reading [i]Catcher In the Rye[/i] for English, and [i]Last of the Mohicans[/i] as a book choice for a project in my US History I class. I'm reading Saiyuki (I'm on vol. 4, but Lumi lent me all 7 - the most she has) and vol. 2 of xxxholic. And I'm also reading a book called [i]Otherland[/i] by Tat Williams. The other book I'm reading for fun is [i]Oh Pioneers![/i] by Willa Cather (unless it's Kate Chopin - gosh I can't remember), but for some reason, it's currently on hold.

But I know that some people just can't read that many stories and remember all the different plots (and [i]Otherland[/i] has several different plots running through it's book - lol), and other people can. What about you? [/color]

[Shinmaru]

I can read multiple novels, but I prefer to read one novel at a time. It's just a lot easier for me to concentrate and get the most out of a novel if it's the only thing that I am reading at the time. Plus, when I read several novels at once, it takes me a lot longer to finish them. I also tend to forget stuff that happens in other novels when I start going from one to another and back again. It gets confusing lol.

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]Personally I prefer to read only one book at a time, as I can concentrate more fully on the plot and just enjoy the book itself. I can't remember if I've ever tried to read multiple books at the same time, I don't recall any time in the last while that I've done it. Actually I can remember trying to read a number of early Star Wars novels at the same time and I found it distracting as I'd forget parts of what was going on, and like Mike it took me longer to finish the books than it would have if I had done them one at a time. [/SIZE]

[Lady Asphyxia]

[font=arial narrow][size=2]I have three words for you: [b]Short. Attention. Span.[/b] It can most probably be considered the bane of my life. Generally I'm in the middle of many books at once: my most was probably 7-8 at once. I find this happens particularly when I'm rereading books, because I get bored with them, mark the page, and move to the next book.

My biggest problem with reading multiple books is that I get confused which events happen in which books. So I'll go back to a book and think, [i]This doesn't make sense! They were just at the carnival, not a forest![/i] and lose the plot...which in turn makes me lose interest and pick up another book, haha.

I can see that reading multiple books can msot definitely be tiresome/troublesome, but at the same time I get bored very easily. I'm quite a demanding reader, I suppose. The second desription seems to lag, I either put down the book and skip until I hit some dialogue. A bad habit. ^_^"[/font][/size]

[AzureWolf]

[COLOR=blue]I'm in the same boat as Lady A. I have the attention span of a - oh, look, a bird!

I don't tend to have the "confused plot/story" phenomenon as the books I usually read are wholly different from one another. Some are abstract, having no story but only theory or concepts, others are stories, and still others are informational material.

For instance, I'm currently reading [i]On Bullshit[/i] by Frankfurt; [i]Laser: the Inventor, the Nobel Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War[/i] by Taylor; [i]Theories of Personalities[/i] by Schultz; [i]The Greatest Benefit to Mankind[/i] by Porter; [i]Piano for Dummies[/i]; and one other Piano book (and yes, these are for my leisure and not school).

Well, in this case, only one of the books has a story (the Laser one). Even that, though, is just a dramatized retelling of true events. The point is, though, I might read a sci-fi book and some Renaissance book at the same time, but never two Renaissance books.[/COLOR]

[Godelsensei]

I'm always reading about seventeen books at once. I have books I started reading years ago that I pick up no more than biannually and am no more than halfway through, then I have books I pay a lot of money for and read in an hour and a half, like with "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress". I have books I cart around with me all the time, yet never read a word of and books I've read countless times, despite no one having ever seen me with them.

I never find myself digging through earlier chapters, trying to remember who certain characters are, forgetting plots, or confusing themes. Perhaps it's all the practice I've had juggling more story-lines than is practical at once?

To be perfectly honest, I simply cannot understand how any one can be reading fewer than three books at once. I mean, what would you [i]think[/i] about?

[chaoschris89]

I think reading multiple books is great I'm reading vol's 1-4 of a manga called elfquest and a trilogy called the loremaster's of elundiam series so it's not a bad thing really.

[Sinistra]

[COLOR=Navy][FONT=Palatino Linotype]In order to keep up with my [I]Honors English: Sophmore Year[/I] class, I have to be able to read multiple books. In fact, right now, in order to prepare for my state exams, I'm reading two books.

[U]One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest[/U] by Ken Kasey and "The Metamorphosis" by German Existentialist, Franz Kafka. And man is it a pain in the butt! But luckily, the later of the two books mentioned is only eighty-something pages long.

I also read various manga and manwha at my leisure, but those only take me about twenty minutes to read.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Guest Sean]

[SIZE=1]I have mixed opinions on this one, I can personally read half a dozen books and not be confused, but it all depends if I'm [i]in the right mood[/i]. See, let's say I had to read [b]a[/b] book for English, then I would tend to focus on reading that book onl until it's complete and until I've finished writing my report on it.

But, when it's a leisure occurance, then I tend to pick up multiple books, but it depends if the two books are desperatley different, take [i]Catcher In The Rye[/i] and [i]The Big Bad Wolf[/i], both very, very good books in my opinion, but Catcher in the Rye is about a teenagers struggle, and The Big Bad Wolf is about the CIA tracking down 'sex trade'. I don't think I would be able to read the both of them together very well, I would probably get bored of one and read the other.

So, for me, it all depends on mood, genre of book, and if it's a priority or not.[/SIZE]

[Retribution]

[SIZE=1]I can read multiple novels, but I will begin to read both of them less frequently, and as a result finish much later.

I have a pretty good attention span, can pick up on details easily, and remember them pretty far down the road. My limit, though, is at two novels... because they begin to blend and stuff. If I'm going to read three books, one of which has to be really light and unimportant.[/SIZE]

[Leofski]

Seems I'm in the opposite boat to most people here. I never read more than one book at a time, but my attention span can be scary. I generally read books in a day, if i'm not interupted a sitting. I just enjoy reading.

[KarmaOfChaos]

[color=deeppink][size=1]In general, I prefer to keep my focus on one book and be able to appreciate it fully and then move on the next one. Of course, if a book isn't intresting enough or is too content heavy for me to be able to read it without pause for hours and hours on end, then I have a bad tendancy to drop the book for a like a month, read other books, then pick that book back up again and scan the chapters I had read before, and then carry on from there.

But when I do get into the situation where I'm reading several intersting books at a time, which usually happens when my aunt sends me to the book store with 50$ and I just don't know which one to keep reading so I try to read them all at the same time, I find that while I don't get plot lines confused, it's more difficult for me to remember exactly what happened in one particular plotline or another. Which can be frustrating, so I try to avoid it.

Although in the end it really depends on what kinds of books you're reading. For example, reading a tutorial on HTML at the same time I'm reading a fantasy book for pleasure and biography for school doesn't cause hardly any confusion for me at all. But, say, reading a realistic fiction, a fantasy, and a sci-fi all at the same time has the potential to slightly mar my reading experience.

To sum up - I like extended periods of non-stop reading focusing on one book, so that I am intensely into that book for 1-3 days, have a couple days to digest it, and move on. But other methods of reading aren't disasterous for me.

-Karma[/size][/color]

[Kiyu-chan]

Oh wow. I feel like I belong here. :animesmil

I'm known for reading several books at once. I can't honestly say how many I'm reading right now, I know there're a few that I started a few months ago and haven't picked up since. That tends to happen when I get bored.

I'm one of those people who will read for days on end, and then suddenly put down a perfectly good book and forget all about it for weeks. Not exactly a good thing. Especially when I'm checking the book out from the library. Which has happened before.

I'm a horror junkie. Like Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine. If I see those kind of books sitting for sale, I have to buy them. I may have several of those going at the same time, but they don't take long to read, and I don't confuse the plots of those.

Then I could have several manga books going at the same time. That's a frequent thing for me. :animeswea

I just finished a really good book about a werewolf, and I picked up the third book in a series to take it's place. I was in the middle of a Stephen King book, but I put that down last summer and haven't picked it up since, much to my chagrin. Especially since it was so good!

But my point? I have a short attention span as well, and I definately read more than one book at a time.

Just a side question, it struck me that I might be odd this way. Does anyone else prefer to keep to themselves after finishing a good book, and just think it over? Or is that just me...? :animeswea