With other books. It's rare for me to pick something up and read it straight through; most of the time I have a good two to four book readings in progress at the same time. Tonight it's Dune: The Machine Crusade, Cixous/Clement: The Newly Born Woman and God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. There's also some Saul William's poetry, but that doesn't count, right? So, who else here starts books then moves on to start others?
Hamlet. The History of Mexico. Brothers Karamazov. Also have The Greeks and Greek Civilization as well as The Civilization of the Middle ages tempting with their hot selves but have thus far resisted the temptation to tap that ass.
Just something I found at the library. Can't vouch for how good it is yet. Now, the History of the Greeks is written by Jacob Burckhardt and is apparently a classic, although it likely suffers from age.
So Long and Thanks For All the Fish (Douglas Adams), The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins), and 1916 (Morgan Lywelyn). I just can't finish any of them without going to a new one.
I also read a few books at a time. I like to mix genres, too. Novels with history with psychology, or something like that. It's often that I need a break from some modern-day pseudo-thinker, I can't take those straight down. Authors whose books I read in one gulp: Kafka, Diderot, Sartre, Gogol, Pushkin. But these are quite exceptional. I am currently reading a brief biography of Andrey Sakharov, a physicist who was part of the team which developed the Soviet nuclear and atomic bombs. The book also includes a brief preceding history of physics in USSR. I'm taking this one all by itself, it is very interesting.
I do it all the time ...as a matter of course. But I usually don't read other books, novels of the same category. For example, if I'm reading a murder mystery, I can't usually read a second murder mystery. But I can and do read other genre at the same time. Baron Max
Ah, see, apparently this is weird among my friends. "Did you finish Dune?" "No, but I started this" "ahhhhh how can you do that, won't you forget where you were?" Alternating something technical or overly artsy with something readable keeps me from being bored by either.
Ugh. Machine Crusade was fun... but nothing compared to the originals. And the McSequels were horrific beyond comprehension. ~String
--- SPOILER ---- They do boast atrocious writing like: "Hard-eyed scavengers positioned themselves in strategic places along the hot, dusty streets of Arrakis city" Dear god, could they use more descriptive text? "Somewhere inside, he hoped to find the uncaring Erasmus, who had so blatently murdered a helpless child" Hint: if your book has an evil robot who casually kills people, you don't have to preface every description of said robot by explaining how evil it is. "Finally, his words falling like heavy stones,he said, "I am married now, Serena" Her heart seemed to stop beating. Serena took a halting step backward, and bumped into a small table, which toppled over with a crash, spilling a vase and fresh red roses, like blood on the tile floor" Sheer poetry. Red roses and blood, that's a new comparison. And does anyone in this book just do something without at least three adjectives to describe it? She doesn't take a step backward, she takes a halting step backward. Scavengers aren't just scavengers, they're hard-eyed scavengers. Norma Cenva doesn't walk, she moves with an off-kilter gait. Yech. Still they are fun.
I'm almost the opposite. If I pick up a book and start reading it, and especially if it's interesting, I more or less can't put it down, or do anything else leisurely until that book is finished. Now being the huge nerd that I am, I build scale plastic car models and I work on several of them at one time though.
Yep, always a bevy of books on my bedside table. And I flick from one to the other until they are all read, but the pile could grow further before I`m done with these. Current pile - Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body - Armand Marie Leroi The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death - John Kelly Until I Find You - John Irving God is Not Great - Christpher Hitchens RMS Olympic: Titanic's Sister - Mark Chirnside Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature - Richard P. Bentall and Aaron T. Beck The Diary of Samuel Pepys - Samuel Pepys Heh, he ... and "What Car" magazine for November...
You need to fix that, that would drive me nuts. I have dumped books after reading the 1st couple chapters(rarely - Robert Jordan 10 comes to mind), but once I get in there I must finish it. Don't you think about these books...like a song playing in your head over and over?
Even worse, there are a few good books, like "The Order of Things," "Master and Margarita" and lots of poetry that I will open at random and read. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And, yeah for technical stuff, I think over them when I'm not reading them.
