Pages of Starlight: Book Polyamory (AKA: I'm A Book Cheater!)

Friday, May 20, 2016

Book Polyamory (AKA: I'm A Book Cheater!)

I've been noticing lately that the way I read has been changing.

Used to be that I'd pick a book, start it and finish it before moving onto the next one. Now…

Can I say that I feel a little like a book cheater?

You see, as I'm writing this, I have three books marked as 'currently reading' on Goodreads and another that I read the first couple pages of and haven't added. This is actually not terribly uncommon for me lately.

I don't know if it's because I pick up a book and it isn't what I want to read - or if I'm really developing that short of an attention span. (I definitely feel it's the former, because just last month I read two adult books that were around 500 pages each and I never felt bored with them.)

I do feel a bit guilty when I have a bunch of books started at once. That's why I occasionally force myself to either finish the books or go ahead and mark them as DNF.

But, at the same time, I don't actually feel that there is anything really wrong with reading like this.

I can sample books until I find one that's exactly what I want to read at that moment, speed through it and then find something else to read. (Basically, leaving myself with the same problem all over again.)

But it seems like this helps me truly enjoy the book I'm currently reading - even if a few others might not ever get read because they failed to capture me.

Do you go through this? I'd love to know how you deal with it if you do! Or, are you a strictly monogamous reader? (I know I used to be!) Anyway, I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts on this, because I'm not 100% sure how I even feel.

Is this actually good or bad, because I can totally see it being both!

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Elizabeth · 460 weeks ago

I used to be a strict book monogamist! I thought it was blasphemy to read more than one book at once - I literally could not comprehend why on earth anyone would ever want to do that! I think part of it is because I read so quickly that I usually just read a book in one sitting. But then I started working multiple jobs...and that just wasn't happening. And if you're an awful mood reader like I am sometimes that book is just NOT going to work! So I now embrace polygamy. I kind of miss the old days sometimes
My recent post A Book That Everyone Needs To Read Once, or: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

1 reply · active 459 weeks ago

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AmyAelleah 80p · 459 weeks ago

I so agree! I always wondered why anyone would want to read more than one book at a time - besides, how could they keep everything straight?! Now I kind of get it. I am totally a mood reader too, and I think this contributes to me starting something and it's like I say to myself 'not now, maybe later' and then I go off to find something else that fits my mood better. Which I think is really a good thing, otherwise I'd be forcing myself through a story that I wasn't really enjoying. I'm trying to embrace it, and definitely don't feel as uncomfortable with it as I use to, but I miss focusing on just one book at a time.

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Liza Barrett · 459 weeks ago

I do a bit of this. I definitely have books in different formats going at the same time pretty regularly --- I'm almost always listening to something on Audible AND have an ebook or a physical book going. Sometimes I have multiple books on the Kindle going at the same time too, and I bounce back and forth --- that's USUALLY because I realized I needed to finish an ARC soon while I was in the middle of another book, but it's also not uncommon for that to be the result of me just not being in the right mood for whatever I had been reading. I normally eventually decide to put the original book back on my TBR, or mark it as DNF if I'm pretty confident I won't go back to it in the near future.
My recent post To Novella or Not To Novella [Monday Morning Musings]

1 reply · active 459 weeks ago

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AmyAelleah 80p · 459 weeks ago

For me, it's often books of the same format. Like I'll have two physical books and a kindle book that I'm bouncing between. Or, more often, I finally find one that's what I want to read and ignore the others in favor of this one. I seldom have two kindle books I'm reading at once, but I do read my kindle books quite a bit faster than my physical copies. Yeah, every so often I either make my way through the book/s that I've been neglecting or, if I can tell it's not just a mood thing, I DNF them.

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Got My Book · 457 weeks ago

I do a lot of hopping from book to book when rereading. I am less likely to be reading more than one new book at a time (mostly because I have trouble stopping once I start). I do occasionally decide to give a book I stopped a 2nd chance.
My recent post text: I do a Lot of Blog Visiting then my Site Goes Down | Sunday Summary #6

1 reply · active 456 weeks ago

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AmyAelleah 80p · 456 weeks ago

I'm just the opposite! If I love a book enough to reread it, it's like I have tunnel vision for that book and don't even want to THINK about reading anything else. I guess for me, when I feel the need to have several books started at once, it's just because I'm not interested in any of them, or only one of them.

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Friday, May 20, 2016

Book Polyamory (AKA: I'm A Book Cheater!)

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