“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” --Francis Bacon, in a quote I memorized because one of my high-school teachers put it on the wall.
He could have added: Some are to be gulped down eagerly, some are to be nibbled and savored, and some, alas, look really tasty in the store but have to be thrown out after they make you sick.
For me, reading in one go is either a treat I indulge in when I have the time, or, occasionally, something I just have to do when a story just grabs me for some reason. And it’s just for fiction; nonfiction nearly always falls in the “nibble and savor” or “chew and digest” categories.
I’m part of a 50 book challenge on LibraryThing. I pretty much only read books before bed, mostly because I forget them downstairs, then have to go get them, go back up stairs and by then, I’m wide awake.
I’m a pretty fast reader, I suppose and I definitely “reward” myself in reading. If I get a bunch of books, I’ll read the one I am least interested in first and save the one I am most interested in for last. It’s kind of goofy since god knows, I’ll read them all.
I do try to savor my favorite writers, but I suck at it. I’ll blow through a Koontz faster than a bowl of ice cream. Meanwhile, I’m struggling through a Peter Straub book that is just…painful.
I’m up to 26 books so far this year, I had to do it by page count since I’ve downed quite a few big’uns.
Usually a modified #1. I’ll read the book until something external happens and I’m somehow interrupted. (e.g., I need to go somewhere, there’s a phone call, etc.) The next time I start reading, it might be the same book, it might be something different, but I’ll read that until I’m interrupted. When there are few interruptions, and the book stays physically near me, and it’s really good, I’ll read it in one go.
#3 is for books that I like and know I should read, but for some reason “can put down.” If they get to the point where they grab my attention, they become part of the modified #1.
It depends on the book and for some reason I have a habit of reading biographies at bedtime in bed and certain things in the bathtub. I think if a book is difficult I save it for the bathtub. I don’t mind spreading nonfiction over a few weeknights even if it’s engrossing. There is the occasional novel I’ll read in a binge but in the last few years I seem to read shorter novels. It’s a bit weird but I don’t seem to have the stamina for sitting any more. I used to be able to lounge on the chair all weekend with a novel but now it gives me a reading hangover.
I have to read a book in one go. I’ve never understood how people can read a little, set the book down, then pick it up again weeks later. Of course, in university I had to read several at once, but now I read one at a time and nothing else until it’s finished. I even read Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time, whichever title you prefer, that way. Straight through, beginning to end. Took me about a year. My year of reading Proust.
It depends on a number of factors, including how absorbing the book is, whether I want to take time to think about it between bouts of reading, how sleepy or busy I am, and how many other books I have going at the same time. I always have a “treadmill book” that I only read while I’m exercising; it needs to be absorbing as an inducement to exericise more, but only gets read a maximum of two hours a day.
You know, I usually drag out books in long sessions. Primarily because I’m a slow reader, who usually can’t sit with a book for more than a half hour at a time.
However, over the last two weeks, I’ve gone on marathon sessions. The first was with The Know It All, a memoir about a person attempting to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. I read 106 pages the first time I picked it up. The second is Harry Potter Deathly Hallows, which I mostly forced myself to finish, so that I could be the first doper to have it done, actually getting a chance to participate in the spoiler forum.
So: I read the 7th Harry Potter in one sitting, because I didn’t want to have it spoiled before I finished it. The boks I had been reading, and have now returned to, are If Harry Potter Ran General Electric (the treadmill book, which I’ll finish tonight), Vietnam, Now (the bathtub book), and The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession (the bedside book). I’ll probably switch out to Physik and Charlie Bone and the Beast as I finish these, because I don’t want to leave a book hanging when I head overseas at the end of next week, and I want to start a nice, fresh, dense book at the airport.