A thought on why it’s perfectly OK to have many books going at the same time

“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.”
— Virginia Woolf

Captured in one of her many letters, the British novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf steps to the defence here of many readers who will start a new book before finishing another — or finishing several.

I definitely fall into the camp of having several (sometimes many) books in progress at once. Usually, I’m on track with one for a good while, but if I am, say, listening to an audiobook, I’ll have a primary bedside book for nighttime, and another tucked away in my backpack. That’s three there.

Then factor in what happens, say, when a book is due soon at the library (the vast majority of the books I consume are either borrowed on paper or much more often electronically). In that case, it pops to the top, if necessary, and something else is paused … sometimes literally, if it’s in an audio player.

The books that can have the longest duration between starting and finishing tend to be the ones I’ve bought for myself. If I’m not obsessed with finishing it, I’ll put it on hold while I deal with library loans.

I used to chide myself for not being more, shall we say, sequential in my reading, or that having multiple books in progress was a sign of something amiss. What I love about Virginia Woolf’s sentiment here is that rather than a disadvantage, it’s an advantage — the chord is preferable to the single note.

I’m relatively good with tracking things at Goodreads, if you’re active there. I also write pretty regularly on books, and you can find those pieces grouped together here.