It is a soggy, marshy sort of day, the fifth in a row in this week of spitting rain and wind.  We’re not used to this in Southern California; rain makes us crazy, like wet Santa Ana winds.  Anyway, I recommend a lot of reading this weekend.  Stay inside, cultivate your mind a bit, you know?  The sunshine will return soon enough.  For now, here’s something to contemplate for the weekend:

I’ve decided, in the spirit of the new year, with this new weather and what not, to try to shake up my reading life.  I’m going to attempt to read more than one book at a time.  If you click over to The Stack, you can see that I’m currently involved with three different books (each of them, weirdly enough, non-fiction).  I’ve never been able to successfully do this.  One book always comes to dominate my attention and I finish it before moving on to the other books.  Here’s my current plan is to read Ken Auletta’s Googled on the train and at work, Nick Flynn’s The Ticking is the Bomb when I’m home or out at a coffee shop, and Kingsley Amis’ Everyday Drinking in pieces, here and there (Okay, actually only when I’m in the bathroom…happy now?).

The question is, can this be sustained?  Will I be able to put down one book for another?  Does anyone have tips for how to do this?  Will it make me read more books or simply indulge my desire to always be starting a new book (the “grass is always greener” phenomenon)?  I shall report back.

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