MY EXPERIMENT AT READING MULTIPLE BOOKS AT THE SAME TIME (PART 1)

 

I had never done it before. I would always read one book at a time. It was mainly because I would read only fiction and once I got hold of a book I would not leave it till I am done with it. I must say I was a voracious reader. Back when we did not have access to smart phone I would pick up my book the way we pick up our smart phone every now and then.

Slowly I shifted my genre to non-fiction and there was a time I would read only nonfiction. But at times I would get bored of some books and then I would dump them and start another book. Also I tried hands at some of the so called famous or classic books but unfortunately got tired of few of them and left them halfway. It would always haunt me looking at all those unfinished books and make me feel uncomfortable. They would arouse a sense of incompleteness in me. A sort of insufficiency which told me that I cannot complete the tasks at hand. This coupled with other projects in my life made me feel unhappy. It sort of had an effect on my mental health.

Then one fine day I decided I would finish all the incomplete tasks. One of the projects was finishing all the unfinished books from my shelf. I was slowly drifting towards minimalism also those days. So I decided that I would first finish all the unfinished once and then only will buy new books. But like any other reader I couldn’t keep up with my #bookbuyingban and always found excuses to buy newer books.

This made me feel even more uncomfortable thinking that I can’t even keep up with my resolve, adding to my guilt of leaving things unfinished.

Eventually somehow I came across this idea one day, that, what if I read multiple books at the same time simultaneously; like how we watch so many daily soaps and had different subjects to study in school and we would do all that simultaneously. I just casually searched about it and talked about this idea to my sister and came to know that people actually do read multiple books at the same time. I also read that people feel this is much better than reading a single book at a time.

I thought of doing it. Initially started with two books at a time; one fiction and one nonfiction. It went quiet well. But me being me, now given a liberty of choosing more than one book at a time I picked a lot of books and even made a list of my #tbr (to be read). And now I am overwhelmed. I have selected a lot many books and now all are midway. I am super confused as to which one to pick and whichever not to at a given time. All the titles are pulling me towards them.

So far this is my situation. I will definitely find a solution to this too and will definitely let my readers know about it. But right now I feel stuck and more so because I have selected way too many non-fiction books and I want to finish them all.