Okay, so if you've been a follower of mine for any length of time, you'll know that I am a mood reader. While being a mood reader is a blessing in many ways, it can also be a curse.
I've noticed a lot over the last few months that if I stop being in the mood for my current read, I'll procrastinate reading anything. I've seen some BookTubers do videos where they try reading multiple books (at a time) for a week to see if it boosts their reading creativity, and I thought this would be an interesting experiment for me, as a certified Mood Reader!
The Books
Okay, so the thing you're probably most interested in: which books have I been reading? This experiment was a little chaotic, so it ran just over a week (well, it's continuing - but I'll get to that in a bit!) but the books I've been reading are:
This Lie Will Kill You by Chelsea Pitcher
Down Among The Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
Transformation by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Your Soul Is a River by Nikita Gill
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
How It Went
I think this reading experiment was useful as reading multiple books gave me the chance to pick up what I was in the mood to read, rather than avoiding what I wasn't in the mood for (and in turn, reading anything altogether)
I have always been a one-book-at-a-time reader; I've never had anything against the concept of reading multiple books, I just didn't think it was for me.
But, my opinion has completely changed. Having a couple of books to choose from has given me so much more freedom when it comes to reading, and I've really enjoyed it.
The main thing that always held me back from reading several books at once in the past was the fact that it delayed the excitement of finishing a book. It delayed the satisfaction of completing a story, and getting to add it to my wrap-up list. This was something I had to work to get over, as I feel like I still put too much pressure on myself, and too much emphasis on the whole 'I read ____ books this month' thing that tends to come with being a bookish creator.
I think having websites like Goodreads and Storygraph is great, don't get me wrong. However, I do think that these websites can create a kind of toxic environment when it comes to competitive readers. No matter how hard we try, there is always a little part of us that wants to read more than the next person...
Books I Finished
Out of the books I mentioned earlier in this post, I listened to This Lie Will Kill You and Down Among The Sticks and Bones as audiobooks, and finished them pretty quickly. Both books were disappointments for me unfortunately, but I'm glad I listened to the audiobooks rather than physically reading them.
Transformation is a short story collection which I read as personal study research for university. I don't really know how to discuss this one to be honest; I wouldn't say I enjoyed the collection, but it was useful for the topic we're studying so...
Your Soul Is a River is a book I thought I had already finished, but realised that I never actually read the last few pages (I don't really know how I managed that) so I finished it today. I really struggle with ebooks, and I know that if I'd read this physically, with a hardcopy of the book, I would have flown through it, and wouldn't have taken this long to finish it (I started it in June...)
I am still listening to the audiobook for The Atlas Six, and I'm enjoying it so far. I'm really enjoying audiobooks at the minute, and they're really helping me to stay motivated to read more.
Final Thoughts
Overall, this has totally changed the way I think about reading. I never would have thought that I would become a multiple-books-at-once reader, but here we are.
I was in a reading slump in September, so that might have impacted this experiment slightly, but to be honest, I'm just grateful that I've managed to read nearly ten books this month so far, and we still have over a week until November!
Do you read more than one book at a time, or are you a single book reader? Let me know in the comments!