You may have noticed that I often start a new book before I finish the old one. I know I stash different books in various places (bedroom, office, bathroom, patio) but that’s indicative of my fear of ever getting caught with nothing to read and it is fading away into history with the advent of electronic reading devices, especially my iPhone 6 Plus.
Nowadays I have all of the titles in my most recent reading pools ready in my pocket.
But what I often find myself doing is getting a little tired of the book I am currently reading and jumping ahead to a new title that might seem to offer me more excitement, more interest, more satisfaction. Keeping a roll-over list of books I haven’t finished has helped control the urge to rush ahead, but this last month I notice that my auxiliary reading list was almost as busy as my monthly reading list.
It’s interesting that the age or the length of a book doesn’t seem to be a major factor in my running out of steam. I read War and Peace cover to cover twice, almost without stopping, but I cried real tears desperately trying to finish some relatively short books. I really notice this phenomenon when I try to read science fiction: a lot of the gee-whiz way-cool fiction, let’s face it, is pretty boring.
Reducing the pool to only twenty titles should help to concentrate my reading but there’s always a new title or two that flies in unannounced and throws the best laid plans a-glee.
Still, a new reading list is always exciting. See anything you might want to read along with me?
- How German Is It? — Walter Abish
- Hawksmoor — Peter Ackroyd
- The Japanese Lover — Isabel Allende
- Lionel Asbo: State of England — Martin Amis
- The Bridge on the Drina — Ivo Andric
- Le Depute d’Arcis— Honoré de Balzac
- Paradise — Donald Barthelme
- Tinkerbell On Walkabout — Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
- The Names — Don DeLillo
- Go Down, Moses — William Faulkner
- Growth of the Soil — Knut Hamsun
- The Flaming Corsage — William Kennedy
- Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age — Amani Al-Khatahtbeh
- The Return of Munchausen — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
- Dodsworth — Sinclair Lewis
- The Magician — W. Somerset Maugham
- The Mise-en-Scène — Claude Ollier
- Doomed — Chuck Palahniuk
- Dendara — Yuya Sato
- Moshi-Moshi — Banana Yoshimoto
A Celebration of Reading 
I generally have at least four books going at once – all different types of books, except once when I was reading two books about a widowed English squire with a daughter. That was a disaster because I couldn’t keep the stories straight. Both were group reads, so I didn’t really have the option of putting one of them aside for a while.
Currently reading and enjoying Growth of the Soil with the 19th Century Lit group and read The Magician with them a couple of years ago.
The Deputy of Arcis is a strange one for me. It was finished by someone else after Balzac’s death. The first time I read it, I thought it was boring as heck, but when I read it some years later, I quite enjoyed it.
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I’m so pleased that I am not the only crazy that does this. I am reading four books consecutively at the moment, yet have a yen to reread ’84 Charing Cross Road’ . I recently reread ‘War and Peace’ for the umpteenth time, and was so sad when I finished it. The fear of being caught anywhere without a book is real and terrible.
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What a relief, I thought I was the only crazy doing this. The fear of not having a book to hand is a very strong force.
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