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A few of my childhood go-to’s. I’d usually have three or four books going at once.<\/p><\/div> Some readers love more than one book at a time, while others are serial monogamists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOne of our regulars, Lincoln, came to the store the other day with his dog, Zeno. This isn’t unusual; Lincoln and\u00a0Zeno\u00a0often end up at the bookstore after their jaunts through the woods and lakeside trails in our town. What was unusual was that Lincoln wasn’t looking for a book. “I’m reading five at the moment,” he said, “and while I’m tempted, I can’t add another to the mix.”
\nThis led to a lively storewide discussion of reading habits: who reads one book at a time, and who\u00a0likes to have several books going at once. (The store was split about 50\/50, though that may be\u00a0an atypical sampling.)
\nEach camp was firm in\u00a0its preferences; the one-at-a-timers couldn’t fathom wanting to juggle several storylines simultaneously, while the several-at-once-ers enjoyed\u00a0the opportunity to engage with\u00a0the different sides of their reading selves as the mood struck.
\nThe strength of the readers’ feelings reminded me of conversations about monogamy versus polyamory (having more than one romantic connection at a time*). (*This is obviously a simplistic reduction of polyamory. I’m using it as a metaphor.)\u00a0As with mono\/poly preferences, readers seem innately and strongly drawn toward one style of book love over the other.\u00a0<\/span>
\nI was a several-at-once-er as a kid\u00a0and read as the mood struck me.\u00a0On any\u00a0given day, I might start with a deep dive into a\u00a0fantasy world, and then\u2014after an\u00a0interruption of some kind\u2014switch to silly poetry, or a mystery, or something spooky. “I contain multitudes!” my young reading soul would shout, and I rarely had\u00a0fewer than three books going at a time. <\/span>
\nThese days, I’m still relatively book poly. Right now, I’m listening to Elizabeth Acevedo’s warm and memorable realistic YA novel,\u00a0With the Fire on High<\/em> (beautifully read by the author) and reading Sarah Blake’s The Guest Book <\/em>and Rebecca Solnit’s Whose Story Is This?<\/em>\u00a0I’m also reading Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race<\/em> for a discussion group\u00a0in town.\u00a0These books\u00a0are all so different from one another that they meet different needs and moods, and fit into different contexts of my days.\u00a0<\/span>
\nBut sometimes I’ll start three or four books, looking to be swept up by just the right literary suitor, and when\u00a0the right one comes along, I’ll abandon the others and just focus on the sparkly new love. On those occasions, I suppose\u00a0I’m neither book mono nor book poly; I’m just a heartless spinebreaker.\u00a0<\/span>
\nWhen it comes to your reading habits, are you book mono, book poly, or something else altogether?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"