'More Than One Book at a Time?'

We have acquired new, smaller bedside tables. More than a third of the surface area is occupied by the alarm clock and a lamp, leaving less space for reading matter. All further accumulation of books and magazines will, of necessity, be vertically arranged, a single stack, which makes it convenient to answer some questions from a reader: 

“Do you read more than one book at a time? How do you manage to keep them straight in your head? Do you ever forget what you have already read and have to read it again? What are you reading now?”

 

The answers: Yes. I don’t know. Yes. Give me a minute.

 

I’ve never had difficulty reading several books simultaneously. Usually they represent contrasting genres, which minimizes confusion. In other words, I would probably never read Nostromo and War and Peace at the same time. Think of it as exercising different sets of muscles in the body. Sometimes I’ll go weeks without opening an active volume. On occasion, I’ll give up on a book – something I wouldn’t permit myself to do when young. Here are the books and periodicals on my bedside table:

 

The Complete Essays of J.V. Cunningham (Wiseblood Books, 2024)

 

Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature (Editiones Schoolasticae, 2024) by Edward Feser

 

From the Holy Mountain (Harper Collins, 1997) by William Dalrymple

 

The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor (Farrar, Straus, 1969)

 

The New Criterion, January 2024

 

Both The Claremont Review of Books (Fall 2024) and The Jewish Review of Books (Winter 2025) are published in the tabloid format, so I keep them in the drawer below.

 

Respectively, literary essays, philosophical text, history, fiction, periodicals. Little chance for confusion. Taylor represents a respite from the other books. I know and love his stories and even met him once back around 1971. I’m reading Cunningham for review so I’m taking heavy notes. The Feser I’m reading out of pure selfishness and, again, taking heavy notes. The Dalrymple volume is a lark.