Anita Lewis

Reading Multiple Books?

Published on: by Anita

2 min read

I’m currently working on a change in my reading habits. For several years I’ve been reading multiple books at a time. My maximum has been around 7. Most recently I was reading four books. As I read books or other material I see other books of interest and often get them. Accumulating books is not much of a problem. Starting new books while already reading several others feels like an addiction. Recently I was aware of some feelings about my reading: 1. I felt scattered and unfocused. 2. I felt overwhelmed by all the available information and my desire to understand it. So many things are connected and I felt driven to connect them in my mind.

Am I hungry for information? Or something else? I’ve decided to stop what feels like hopping around all these writings and take a breath. Maybe I’ll understand more as I try something different. I looked at what might work:

  • I want to read only one main book at a time. I want that to be mostly non-fiction.
  • There is always one book that I’m reading for a book group. The books we read are “depth and mysticism” and we read them slowly and meet every two weeks. This kind of reading with the discussions is not a problem for me.
  • I read spiritual material in the morning for about a half hour. This could easily be the same book I read for the book group. It could also be another non-fiction book.
  • I like to read a bit before going to sleep. Fiction would be good for a short read at night for a half hour or so.

So that’s 3 books, the main book of non-fiction that I read during the day, the fiction for a short read at night, and the book for the book group which is also a short read. That felt calming just thinking about it.

I did this today and I noticed my mind felt clearer. I realized that I didn’t have to sit and figure out what I was going to read. Twice while reading I made a connection with the other book that I had been reading, but had set aside until later. I found it interesting that I did not feel driven to get that other book out and look at exactly what it said about what I was connecting to. It felt like I already had enough of the idea in mind. I felt a sense of freedom that seemed to clear my thinking to focus on what I was actually reading.

This is a start. We’ll see where it goes.