And the Loopholes Begin...

Reading over my rules I neglected a key loophole to rule number five, which is as follows:

5. I will read one book at a time.

I see this rule as important. I spent a while recently at the post on Hemingway's personal library over at  library thing. A quote from a Hemingway biography states that he was, no surprise, a voracious reader, and that he usually had about eight to ten books going at once. I think this may be fairly common for serious readers of challenging books. If you are knocking out neat little genre novels one after the other, it is easy, maybe necessary, to keep them in a tight domino line. But if you are reading non-shite books, philosophy, biographies, serious novels, poetry, you may need to switch it up. Call it a recharging of the batteries.  A cleansing of the literary palette.

Reading should not be a chore, the compulsive book changer argues. The moment you find a book tiresome or repetitive or offensive, this is the time to put it down. A bad movie will cost you only two hours of your life. A bad book can demand eight to ten hours of free time depending on the size of the book and the speed at which you read. This doesn't even take into account the differences in mental energy reading demands over viewing. This is too much good reading time after bad. So slip a bookmark into that volume and draw another from the stack. No one is watching.

But maybe all the shuffling it is just rank dilettantism, which may be fine, even necessary, for most writers of fiction. However, I suspect most books are not abandoned because they are so horrible, but rather because the reader assumes greener literary pastures between the next cover. Also, there is that initial rush of a new read, the power of selection or election, then the effortless rush of the first fifty pages. In any reading effort, even in great books, the middle third is the slog, and where jumping ship is easiest.

I believe having a list, even an unrealistic, unwieldy one like mine, which forsakes all other books, is an antidote to mindless book hopping. For me, every one of the millions of books ever written are no longer before me, just the 700-odd on my list. I can calmly move from book to book, savoring those meant to be savored, learning from those with something to teach and, yes, suffering through those that offer little else. I think this is the formula for a truly enjoyable and rewarding reading life.

Oh yeah, and now the loophole. I am permitted to read one book at a time and listen to one audiobook at a time in my car. The audiobooks are for my 40-minute drive to The Job.