I have a friend, culturally minded, who used to share my love of books. Now, for whatever reason, he lost interest in reading. When people gift him with a book, he gives it to me, with one request: “Keep it but tell me the gist of it so I can tell my friend I’ve read it.”
I am a child of traditional book reading. I used to go through one book continuously from beginning to end, not in one seating of course. I would take notes, highlight passages I like, and sometimes even pore through the bibliography at the end of the book. Then on to the next book. That was then. Nowadays I have acquired this habit of multiple book reading. I no longer stick to one book at a time. I jump from book to book without finishing one book first. Half an hour on one book, then another book in the next half hour. I normally have two to three books for reading at home and another set of three different books in the office, which I read only there. I also have e-books on my cellphone. As of this writing, I am into at least six books, in varying stages of completion.
It is like a smorgasbord of food arrayed in front of you. In the same way that a variety and contrast of the food items on your plate keeps your taste buds awake and on the alert, and even results in new dish concoctions, multiple book reading helps “spice up things” as they say. Someone once said, “A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.” Is it really a bad practice to juggle between too many books at a time? Maybe I like to have many half-finished love affairs.