Are You a Serial Reader? 📚
This is why you should try reading multiple books at the same time; how to find a book when you've forgotten its title; and a few words on July's book of the month 'Three Women' by Lisa Taddeo.
How Many Books Are You Reading Right Now?
The debate is on: should we read one book at a time or enjoy multiple simultaneously? Although this is a completely personal choice, here are some reasons you might want to try the second route.
Exercise your brain
Reading multiple books at the same time is not rare in academic environments, most high school and college programs have a heavy required reading list that students must complete each semester. After exiting those environments, people tend to put reading aside — as it’s not required — and think of it as leisure instead of an obligation. But, as it happened with those required reading lists, following different timelines, characters, and plots, is actually a great workout for your memory and brain.
Take a break
Reading more than one book at a time gives you the opportunity to interrupt some titles that slow you down and instead find a book that’s easier, more fun, and faster to read. It’s a great way to avoid falling into a reading slump. You can pick that challenging book after, and maybe it will be more inspiring after taking a break.
Look for unexpected connections
If you keep your eyes open, be prepared for some literary magic when the parts of the books you are reading connect in unexpected ways. Picture it, by accident or if you deliberately picked up a historical novel of a front-line nurse and a memoir about a World War II fighter pilot, this "literary synergy" is perfect, as book reviewer Julia Keller describes it.
In the highly recommended article The debate: how many books should you have on the go at once? that follows Alice Vincent and Sam Parker’s email thread on the subject, Vincent writes:
If anything, I started to realise the joys and benefits of reading several books at once. How you can build perspectives by, say, reading Virginia Woolf’s diaries at the same time as the fiction she wrote, or two books that bounce off one another, like EM Forster’s Howard’s Endand On Beauty, Zadie Smith’s riff on it.
Explore different formats
Your TBR pile might not look like a pile at all. Thanks to the multiple formats available for book lovers (learn more about that in our last newsletter!) your TBR might extend to an e-reader, cellphone, and computer. Don’t get overwhelmed though, by taking advantage of all of them — listening to one audiobook at the gym, clicking through a different e-book on your commute, and reading a physical title at home — you can experience all of the wonderful mediums in which the written word is shared while blazing through that TBR pile at the same time.
Share with friends
Small talk is out the window once you start sharing good books with your friends. Uplevel by chatting with different friends about different books so you can all share your progress on all of them, and not just letting a handful sit there, half-read, while you binge your way through sixteen others. Finding book friends doesn’t have to be hard, they can be real friends, internet friends from literary groups on social media, or yours truly. THAT is why this newsletter was created, so let’s share!
Let us know what you are reading this month and if you’re a serial reader or willing to try it!
From the New York Public Library: Finding a Book When You've Forgotten Its Title
This happens more often than not, and it’s extremely frustrating! Here are some tips Gwen Glazer from the New York Public Library posted a while ago, but still very useful:
Google literally anything you can remember about the book; subject, characters, cover details… anything works.
Crowdsourcing through the many book networks online such as What’s the Name of That Book?, Name That Book, or Reddit’s whatsthatbook thread.
Use Library Databases that you can access with your library card.
Finally, Glazer gives some excellent advice:
Move On: Sometimes, it's just not going to happen, and you can't find that elusive book you've been searching for. It's okay! Great news: The world is full of great books!
Read the whole article here.
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
Reading Lisa Taddeo’s works feels like watching a violent, majestic oceanic landscape.
For Three women, Taddeo came upon the stories of Maggie, Lina, and Sloan while traveling the United States researching what desire looks like for women. Maggie’s story (probably the hardest to digest) she found through newspaper articles covering the inappropriate relationship between a male high school teacher and one of his young female students. After that, as she did with the other women that fill these pages — and many more that didn’t want their stories to go public — she sat down to distill facts and feelings. The result is a raw testimony of female desire, the might of how it comes crashing down against the rigidity of society’s rules.
The multiple voices Taddeo includes in the stories give readers the opportunity to go beyond the veil of the obvious, and witness the vexing scrutiny women’s desire comes under in contrast with barely-there expectations men face. It’s impossible not to ask oneself if we’re all wardens of this judgment, and what our part is in other’s unhappiness or bliss.
Walking hand in hand with a housewife longing for passion, a cool girl forged in ice, a schoolgirl looking for a lifeline — and the patriarchal society that makes sure that no one comes out unblemished — will hopefully give readers the strength to stop judging the waves that crash, and admire the dents they leave in the rocks instead.
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If you can’t get enough of Taddeo’s writing, make sure to check out her latest book Animal, recently nominated for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. (Get it here).
A quote:
“Women shouldn't judge each others lives, if we haven't been through one another's fires.”
Book specs:
306 pages - 11 hours read approx.
Three Women became a #1 New York Times bestseller and will be a series on Showtime with some serious A-listers.
Taddeo comes from an investigative journalism background.
She’s a two-time recipient of the Pushcart Prize, for her short stories "42", published in the New England Review, and "Suburban Weekend", published in Granta.
Check out her website.
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