How Many Books Should a Person Read at Once?
It is hard to keep up my book blogging. My attempted blogging about books. That thing I try to do. What I realized is that one of the issues with keeping up on my blogging about books is that I can’t decide what kind of a book blogger I want to be. I’ve tried a few different approaches—lists, recommendations, monthly recaps, annual recaps, things that may or may not be reviews—and the thing that I keep coming back to is that I read a lot of books at the same time.
I recently decided to count how many books I’m reading right now. Books either sitting on my bedside table, on my desk, books I’ve started recently, continued reading recently. Books I picked up, read a chapter or two, and put back down, or that I didn’t realize I picked down until it occurred to me that I’d been reading that book and then at some point stopped reading it, or maybe I’m still reading it.
I am fairly certain that at any moment I am reading somewhere between three and seven books, with other times the number closer to ten or twelve or fifteen. So I took up my notebook labeled Lists (in which I write lists) and wrote “Books Started 2022” at the top of a page. Later, I added “or Continued” to the title.
This list of books.
What I realized is I’ve either started, continued (from 2021), or completed twenty-three books so far in 2022.
I wan’t going to catalog the entire list here, but it does get me wondering: how many books do normal people read at once? How many books can a person actively read over the span of a week? Is it normal to have three different books on your bedside table and cycle through them over the span of 45 minutes? Is this a sign that I don’t like the books enough that I’m reading?
At the current moment, I’m actively reading:
Blitzed, a non-fiction book about all the drugs Nazis were doing in the Third Reich. Being consumed via Audible.
The Seventh Function of Language, a novel by the author of one of my favorite books, HHhH. Reading a hardcover copy of it. Our book club pick for the month.
The Little Drummer Girl, being read simultaneously between Kindle and Audible. Because I always have to be reading at least one thing by John le Carre.
To Paradise, by the author of the brutally sad A Little Life. I’m hooked but it’s a lot. Reading it on Kindle.
In Cold Blood. Doing an audiobook read by Scott Brick, perhaps my favorite audiobook narrator
Essays One by Lydia Davis, reading in paperback form
The End of the Story, also by Lydia Davis, which I’m reading on my Kindle
The Apartment, an audiobook I found free on Audible. A thriller. Probably something involving murders or missing people.
I guess that’s eight? Then there are the books I’m reading more passively. One I’ve picked up, read pieces of, didn’t finish or haven’t finished and haven’t read in the past few weeks but that I still intend to finish reading. These include:
The White Album, paperback
Absalom, Absalom, hardcover
2666, paperback
American Pastoral, Kindle and audiobook
The Unconsoled, Kindle and audiobook
This isn’t meant to be a brag. It’s more meant to be a genuine question that I’m shouting into the void of my blog. Is this normal? Should I be reading this many books at the same time? Am I diminishing the experience of any one book by constantly jumping between all these different books?
I think, even if not normal, it’s at least a somewhat good idea to read several books at once. You want to be able to cleanse your palate. To jump between a more serious novel, a lighter novel, a book of poems, a book of essays, an anthology of some sort, and some kind of narrative nonfiction. Also, you want to have something going on both audio and paper at all times.
So, how many books should a person read at once? More like, how many books shouldn’t a person read at once?