Does anyone else do this? It drives my husband nuts! Currently, I am reading Deadspeak, The Great Hunt, The Ruby Knight, The Lord of the Rings, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’m also considering getting The Haunting of Hill House after reading the haunted house book thread. It took me two years to read Emma, because of all the other books I read during the same period. I always run out of bookmarks, and wind up using pricetags and stickies.
I usually read more than one book at a time.
I do it all the time. Incidently, I’ve read the Ruby Knight and Lord of the Rings. I’m often in the middle of three or so books, plus reading both papers everyday, and numerous magazines. I’m not sure if it’s because of a short attention span, or if I just can’t stop reading.
Sometimes I have so many books running concurrently that I wind up dropping one, which is why I haven’t finished a small percentage of my book collection. To this day, I’ve read the beginning of Wuthering Heights 6 times.
Oh yeah, right now I am reading
A London Girl of the 1880’s
Jayne Eyre - again
The Neandertal Enigma
and I have been slogging through the Florence Harding Biography for at least a year and a half. I am almost done with it but I began it too close to the Clinton Scandal and can only take very small doses of it.
I am also reading Out of Time a fantasy novel.
Guess which book gets finished first? 
Right now I’m reading Executive Decision, Moby Dick, Treasure Island, Red Skies and I finished Goblet of Fire last night.
My ex-wife used to bitch about the number of tomes residing on my night table at any given time.
I can also put down a book for months at a time and pick it up right where I left off.
Me, too. I usually have from 2 to 4 going at once.
I do that all the time!
Currently on my reading list:[ul]
[li]Two travel guides[/li][li]The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens[/li][li]Naked - David Sedaris[/li][li]Eureka Street - Robert McLiam Wilson[/li][li]Mort - Terry Pratchett[/ul][/li]And that’s not even counting the research I’ve been doing regarding next year’s trip. (Yeah, I’m a nut.)
I’m sure I’m forgetting something, though.
I do it all the time. I’ve got the following going:
The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons
The Decameron by Boccaccio
Profit Over People by Noam Chomsky
Oh man, I always do that, but not by choice. I just can’t resist; I pick up a book read a few paragraphs and get hooked. I have to force myself to complete a book BEFORE picking another. Alas I am all too often lured by temptation.
Right now I’m only on two:
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie and
Ten Philosophical Mistakes by Mort Adler
Yep! I do it constantly. In HS, I usually had at least five going, and that was with my school load and ‘social obligations’.
Like Chief, I can pick up right where I left off. It bugs my wife, who can’t understand how I keep’em all separated.
Compartmentalization.
Right now:
Red Storm Rising
Developing the leader within you
How to win friends and influence people
A Louis L’Amour anthology
Plus various ‘throne room’ periodicals.
put me in the “yes” column, too. don’t go anywhere w/o a book along.
Count me in. I rarely read two fiction works at the same time but I usually have a piece of fiction and several non fictions going at the same time.
Then there were my college years when I was simultaneously NOT reading my textbooks.
Yep, I’m in that club. Strangely enough, I finished my last set and haven’t picked up anything else. Been busy, I guess. Don’t you hate it when you get hung up on one of the books though? For example, I was reading Faulkner’s POS novel The Sound and The Fury and got 3/4 of the way through, struggling the whole time. By the time I finally realized what a pile of crap it was and chucked it, it had kind of jaded me to the rest of my books. Damn, I hate that. Atlas Shrugged did that to me the first couple of times I tried it too. I think I was just too young at the time. I hated the other books I was reading while struggling with that. The third time, I picked it up and couldn’t put it down. Strange.
I felt illiterate after reading Sound/Fury
poo.
I do that fairly regularly, and even more so with magazines. It’s not unusual for me to be working on 5 or 6 different magazines at the same time. Drives Mrs. ricepad bonkers.
Our 6y/o daughter is following in my footsteps (vootschtaps?), too. She’s got a Harry Potter book going, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and some book about a dog…Shilo, I think…I’m so proud I could bust.
I do it, but I have good reason. I have one main book that I leave in my living room. Most of my reading time will be spent with this one. I also have a book at work that I use a couple times a day when I use the little boy’s room. I then have one book next to both toilets in my apartment. And, to top it off, I keep one in my car incase I’m going to have to wait in line somewhere or I decide to grab a quiet cup of coffee at a cafe. So, I end up reading 5 books at a time, but I usually go through 3 or 4 “living room books” before finishing any of the others. Anybody else like this?
Me too!! I usually have 2-3 going. If one happens to start getting a lot more interesting than the rest i finish it first though and drop everything else. This happened with The Hobbit, and lord of rings trilogy. I had to read all 4 straight they were so damn entertaining!
I do it all the time, but never by choice. That’s what being an English major gets you. Right now, I’m re-reading Beloved while also reading Richard II.
For pleasure, I prefer to give one book my undivided attention.
Currently reading:
Techniques of the Selling Writer
The 120-Year Diet (it’s for longevity, not weight loss, but I’m hoping for a little of both)
Curse of the Mistwraith
Although, I do have to agree with Drain Bead on this one:
“For pleasure, I prefer to give one book my undivided attention.”