Whenever I publish a new blog post, I spend inordinate amounts of time clicking back on the post, just to make sure nothing exploded, or to make sure I didn’t misspell the word “public” without the “l.” (Note to everyone: Never misspell “public.” Your spell-checker won’t catch it, and you will never live it down.)
So naturally, this morning I clicked onto my own site yet again and glanced at it yet again. Then I saw it: my “Currently Reading” section on the right-hand side of the screen. What kind of freak reads Lake of Destiny, The Last Word, Not That I Could Tell, and Haunted at the same time? (Oh, and toss in Daily Rituals since I just started that one too.)
That’s largely a rhetorical question. Obviously I am that kind of freak.
Then I felt defensive that I had just called myself a freak, and my first thought was that I really oughtta cuff myself upside the head for calling myself a name. (Clearly people who work alone from home for too long must miss workplace bullying and start making up their own versions to compensate.)
But I got over the urge to beat myself up for calling myself names, and instead I made a trip to Home Depot to buy lumber and a nail gun to build myself a cry closet. Wayne won’t notice if I put it in the middle of his home office since nobody can see half the room anymore due to the boxes of ancient tech gadgets he never unpacked when we moved in … in 2012.
Anyway, one or two back-and-forth motions with a handsaw and I gave up on the cry closet (because the project itself was making me cry and because I already cry every time I go in that office) and sat down to take a coffee break. While I was sitting in the middle of the stuff I’d just bought, wondering how long it would take Wayne to notice large pieces of wood behind his desk chair, it dawned on me that I wasn’t really a freak after all.
No! In fact, I was a genius! I never read those sorts of books literally at the same time. I read them concurrently but not simultaneously. Well, okay, I just checked in the dictionary and it uses each of these terms to define the other, so maybe I’m not the wordsmith I thought I was. Anyway, my point is that I never quite know what mood I’ll be in when I read each day. Sometimes a fun Spellman novel is the right choice. Other days I want the creepy Palahniuk story. Still other nights, a love story set in the Scottish Highlands is the way to go. Or, that Strawser story that’s firing on all cylinders for me.
So, really, instead of being freaky for reading such disparate stories simulcurrently (ha ha, dictionary! I win!)… I’m brilliant for always having the right story to match my mood.
Do you do this? Do you juggle a Currently Reading pile of different genres? Are we all freaks, or are we all brilliant? Feel free to confess here. Besides, I really need the personal validation.
I usually have four books going at once, two fiction and two nonfiction. I do have to keep the topics varied so I don’t get muddled. Right now I am reading S Is for Silence, Space Opera, House and Philosophy, and The Plutonium Files.
I have only the one nonfiction book right now (Daily Rituals–recommended in the Erma group on Facebook), but sometimes the mood calls for nonfiction. At least I’m not alone!
I am reading Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell, The Rational Bible by Dennis Prager, Beneath a Scarlet Sky (fiction set in WWII Italy), From Times Square to Timbuktu: The Post Christian West Meets the Non Western Church and j A Marriage Made in Heaven: Or Too Tired for an Affair. : ]
Do you typically read more nonfiction than fiction? I think I maxed out on too much nonfiction during my first marriage, and these days I have a ton of fun reading all the fiction I can handle. 🙂 I did love The Final Race (Eva Marie Everson and Eric Eichlinger’s book about Eric Liddell) and I know I’ll love Daily Rituals (short entries about many different creative types and their daily rituals). If I find the right nonfiction book, I delve right in.
I’m concurrently (see how I reflected your word choice there?) reading “When Calls the Heart” by Janette Oke, “The Forgetting Tree” by Tatjana Soli, and “Grown and Flown” by Lisa Heffernan. I recently completed “Room” by Emma Donoghue and “Lilli de Jong” by Janet Benson.
I am trying to finish “How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind” and “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity,” but it’s not going well. I think I’ve already lost my mind, and I’m way too stressed. So when I DO have time, I read books that help me to escape my reality instead of full-on dealing with it.
You seem to realize the irony of books on destressing stressing you out, at least. 😀 This is why I read mostly fiction, I think. Not that I need an escape from my current circumstances (I don’t), but that it puts me in a mind-set where I’m subconsciously thinking, “All things are possible!” because of the amazing story-world I’ve entered.
I’m reading four books right now; two are fiction, two are non. One’s about the Hapsburg family, one’s about the history of the Jews, one’s a ghost story, one’s about the Torah. (Three guesses which is fiction and which is non.) Is it weird? Maybe. Do I care? Not a bit. I don’t think eclectic means weird. Now if your tastes were esoteric, that would be weird. 😀