Is it possible to read “too many” books at once?

Before I went everywhere with a loaded digital book device, I would always choose the wrong book. I would go to the airport with one book and before my flight left, I would know it was the wrong book, and I would buy something different. I once did this and then foolishly lent my new purchase to a fellow traveler with nothing to read at all. I then spent the rest of the flight—a decently long one—struggling and failing to read the book I originally selected for the trip.

I read a lot, but I do other very time consuming things too, like cook, draw, teach, and amuse my kids. The question of whether it’s possible to be reading “too many” books at once is not a question about spending more or less time reading.

Some people, including readers more avid than I, read one or two books at a time. Intellectually, I have always known this to be true. I have not always been fully aware of this on an emotional level.

“I’m going to try not to read so many books at a time,” a colleague confessed, as we chatted about changes we might make after a workshop on mindfulness and academic life. I was intrigued by this resolution, as it was frankly not one that had occurred to me over the course of the workshop.

“How many do you normally read at once?” I asked innocently.

I am not sure what number she admitted to—maybe three or four. Maybe five or seven. She wanted to pare that down!?!

I read so, so many more books at a time.

Part of the difference is semantic: if I start a book a few times before committing or rejecting it, it’s on my list. If I’m re-reading two or three or four books, maybe just late at night or before my morning coffee, maybe just on the weekend, that counts. If I’m re-reading part of a text that I’m studying or reading a batch of books for an upcoming course, that counts too. To say that I’m reading these books, even if someone else wouldn’t “count” them, is not the result of a desire to inflate my “current reading” count.

This isn’t a matter of virtue or commitment.

If not that, then what? To be currently reading a book is to hold that book in mind, the shape of it, my sense of it, my expectations of it, my perhaps faulty memories of past reading experiences, my anticipation of a range of interpretations or receptions the book might have gotten or might get… or these overlapping ideas and feelings hover in reserve at the edge of my mind. If this all sounds awful, my colleague’s goal of reducing the list of books in the current reading stack is an excellent resolution.

But for me, being limited to a few books would prevent me from reading. My book would always be the wrong book for the moment. When I’m reading many books, I don’t have this problem. One of them is ready for me, or I am ready for one of them. Or I just start another book.