At a
wedding this weekend I was sitting across the table from an English teacher,
and somehow the subject of reading came up. The discussion took a turn to
book-reading habits, and she told me that she typically has three or four books
going at the same time and goes back and forth between them, adding a new one
to the mix whenever she finishes one of the ones in the stack.
I’ve heard
there were people like that, but it was the first time I’ve ever met one.
That
approach to book-reading is incomprehensible to me. I can read only one book at
a time, and when I start reading a book, finishing it becomes a priority. I
even plan my reading around available blocks of time. For instance, if I’m
flying from San Francisco to New York, I don’t want a book much longer than 250
pages because that’s about the length of book I can read on that flight. I
don’t want to be sitting in a Manhattan hotel room, forsaking the pleasures of
the city, to finish a book I can’t put down.
The Unread 800-Page Novels
If there’s
a book of any considerable length that I want to read, I have to plan ahead. I
won’t start an 800-page novel unless I feel confident that I will have five
days in a row during which I can spend at least three hours a day reading it.
Not only do I read one book at a time, but I don’t want to put it aside even
for a day while I’m reading it. I have to stay connected.
That’s one
reason there are so many famous novels I haven’t gotten around to yet, or so I
tell myself. It’s also the reason that a number of very good (and long) books
are associated with the circumstances in which I read them.
Team of Rivals will forever be
associated with a summer vacation at Lake Tahoe. David McCullough’s Truman took up the better part of a week
in the Bahamas. George Eliot’s Middlemarch
got me through the recovery from my second hernia surgery. Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin made a flight from
Paris to San Francisco almost bearable.
I Love a Mystery — All at Once
Almost
every week I read a mystery novel, typically on Saturday. With a mystery, I
feel that I need to devour it in one day, and the way I go about it has become
a ritual.
Saturday morning I devote to a number of weekend tasks
and to cleaning up any unfinished business from my business. By noon or one
o’clock, I’m ready to go. The book was chosen earlier in the week, but
occasionally there’s a late substitution. If something unexpectedly comes up
for Saturday afternoon, for instance, I might take the book I had planned to
read and swap it out for a shorter one.
I get
started between noon and 2 p.m. and usually read the book in a recliner by the
window in our upstairs family room, where I can look outside and see the trees
and be aware of the weather. About an hour into the book, I take a break to
make a small (2 cups) pot of tea and set out two scones on a plate. I read
until 4:30 or 5, take a break to check email and work on dinner if necessary.
After dinner I read until the book is finished. By then it’s night, the lamps
are on in the room, and I feel that the day is over and has been particularly
well spent.
