So Long Mono-reading, I’m going to miss you!
My reading experience during January was delightful. I read six books in their entirety after finishing off Proust’s In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, and was only a few pages short of finishing Rosa Liksom’s Compartment No. 6. At first, I put down my euphoria to a run of exceptionally good novels, but I soon realised that after a year of switching between multiple books, I’d returned to mono-reading.
My holiday must have set the ball rolling, as there’s nothing more satisfying than one’s total immersion in a great novel during long lazy days in the sun. When I got home, I just carried on. As a result, I have a stack of books waiting to be reviewed, while David Copperfield and Infinite Jest collect dust, and Moby Dick, Don Quixote and The Guermantes Way look very unlikely to get started let alone finished any time soon. I’m surprised at how much of a difference mono-reading made to my reading pleasure, but it was really significant. That said, I need to balance my reading pleasure with my enjoyment of blogging, and that’s the tricky part.
While I will often write straight up book reviews, I do find it frustrating to try and capture the essence of a novel in only a few paragraphs. I worry that my brevity merely skates across the surface, creating a shallow reflection of books of far greater depth and import. The posts I love writing the most are the ones where an idea has struck me while reading a passage – a phrase, even, and that’s been my starting point to meander off from. I’ll often happily write multiple posts about a book if I’ve found enough to write about in it. However, if I only mono-read, I might end up writing about a single book for weeks on end if it’s 50 million pages long and full of interesting ideas. No-one wants that to happen, however scintillating the book is! I have to face it, poly-reading (in moderation) is the only way.
What I will do from now on though, is allow myself the occasional mono-reading holiday – an entire month of single-focused reading with no swapping in of hefty tomes to break my concentration. It might not be perfect, but I think it’ll be a happy medium.
Lucy
Sarah
This is where size is important to me. I read ‘I Capture The Castle’ by itself, as it only took about three days, and I wanted nothing else but to be immersed in it. With huge books, I really fancy going somewhere else for a few days, especially if it’s ‘Moby Dick’, or *shudder* ‘Clarissa’.
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Exactly. A shorter novel can be enjoyed by itself over a few days, but Infinite Jest needs to read little and often. I’ve already written about it loads but have 900 pages to go *thuds to floor weeping*. I do need some discipline though, as if left to my own devices I will ‘forget’ the heftier tomes!
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Its really rare that I poly-read, I admire people who can do it! That said, poly-reading was the only way I was ever going to get through Clarissa…
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Clarissa! I have that to *cough* ‘look forward’ to at some point – yippee! 😉 Poly-reading really doesn’t come naturally to me but I’ve resigned myself to it’s necessity. That said, I’ll really enjoy my mono-reading ‘holidays’ when they come! 🙂
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I truly don’t know how you and Lucy do it – all kudos to you!
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Thanks, although it certainly makes blogging easier with the two of us reading and posting. I’ve seen some posts this week where people have read more than 9 books during January – *gulp*. Now that’s impressive!
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I’m almost half way through War&ParticularlyLong and am trying to finish a couple of other books that are on the go, but suspect I’m best sticking to one at a time. How did you two begin this great dual blog, by the by? as realise you are not close geographically… Hats off to you both I say!
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Ooo, I really want to read that – I’ve enjoyed the adaptation on the Beeb so much! Lucy and I ‘met’ years ago on a running forum and realised we had a love of books in common. The running may have dwindled a bit, but the reading is still going strong!
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I had to think about this as it has been quite some years, but Sarah and I met on an internet running forum, as we are similar in our style (infrequent and slowly) and bonded over a love of books and knitting.
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Well it’s a blog bond made in heaven, as they say!
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I think you both do a great job of dipping in and out of books for your blog. I am a compulsive poly-reader, can’t seem to fix that, so don’t bother to try anymore.
‘Moby Dick’ is on my to-read list, but I think I may listen to it while following along with the book. Have you seen this from a few years ago?:
http://www.mobydickbigread.com/
Some wonderful names reading it – Tilda Swinton, Stephen Fry, Cerys Mathews, Will Self. Not so sure about David Cameron, but I’m willing to give it a go.
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First of all, you lucky, lucky thing having poly-reading as your default setting! Hopefully I’ll get better at it with practice.
I vaguely remember hearing about David Cameron reading this, but never investigated further (I’m fairly certain that was the very reason why 😉 ), but this is a dream come true! I’m planning on reading Moby Dick for #AW80Books, and it seems like a ‘readalong’ is the perfect way to do it. There are a great selection of readers on there, too. I’ll really enjoy this, so thanks for the tip off!
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One thing I have found that I love about blogging about books is that each book lends itself to a particular type of post (in my mind, anyway). When I first started blogging, I didn’t know how to do it, so I used kind of a template for my reviews, but it wasn’t long before I started branching off in all directions depending on what I wanted to say about the book. I see this in other people’s reviews, too. It’s so much fun. So, if a book is calling for you to write a gazillion posts about it, then go for it!
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I know exactly what you mean, blog post ideas do usually just come up rather than get planned. I don’t know why, but some books just exude blog ideas from every page while others leave me scratching my head as to know where to start. and it’s not necessarily down to the quality of the book. I love it when ideas start bubbling up as I’m reading, but there are also those times when you’ve waded through an entire doorstop and have nothing!
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Exactly!
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I admire poly-readers, me being an incurable mono-reader. I just can’t focus on several books at the same time, probably because of overdose of multitasking at work. I just fall into a book and stick with it, but I must admit I haven’t tried Moby Dick 🙂
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I really struggle with it, but it is getting easier with practice. It did feel soooo good to mono-read for a month though, so I’ll definitely be taking out time from poly-reading every now and again, to help keep my sanity. Moby Dick, though, that could be the book to turn you! 😉
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I’m not sure I’m ready to be turned yet 😉 but once I’m big enough to tackle Moby Dick I think I’ll listen to it. Do you think listening to one book and reading another would count as poly-reading?
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Yep, definitely! Kim posted a link to the big read of Moby Dick above and that looks amazing. Once I’ve finished ‘Infinite Jest’, which is huge and needs some serious attention, I’ll give it go, maybe a chapter a day.
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I have nothing but admiration for your polyreading. I really can’t do it – I end up tying myself in knots spotting all kinds of thematic links and hidden clues to characters and plot (‘aha! Another mention of the moon, must be an important theme’ and so on) only to realise that they’re actually from different books.
Part of me thinks the ideal would be to move between mono and poly-reading (as you suggest), but that would require too good a memory on my part. I think I’ll leave the difficult job to you and stick with my only-ever-one-book reality.
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Well, it certainly doesn’t come easily, and I also spot links and clues, and confuse characters from novel to novel! For that very reason I have to make sure that the combination of books I’m reading at any one time are really different. If I didn’t blog I wouldn’t bother because I do find it tricky. That said, I’ve found that knowing I’ll be writing about a book makes me engage more deeply with the reading, so the whole experience feels far more enriching. So on balance, it’s probably worth the faff. 🙂
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My goodness. So how many novels do you usually read at once?? I can barely handle two! hah. But I get it. Now that I’ve started blogging, I need to think about my pacing as a reader to keep up producing content in a timely manner.
I’m glad you’re deciding to opt for a happy medium. We all need variety in our life.
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The only reason I try to poly-read is to make book blogging workable, and as I love reading and blogging, I don’t really mind, but I’m still working on finding that golden ratio! Last year, it got a bit silly at times with me having about ten books on the go, and that just felt like a reading traffic jam – no fun at all. I’m currently trying to keep it down to three books – four max -on the go at one time. Whether I manage it, is another thing entirely!
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