One at a time

I'm not sure if it has to do with my self-diagnosed OCD or maybe it's because I have the memory of a goldfish or it's because when I read a book I travel to that place and time. Regardless of the reason, ever since I started reading chapter books, I have never been able to double book.

I remember in school when we would have to read books for classes and I would always be so far behind because I was already reading a book for pleasure. I could not and would not read my book and another book at the same time. Somehow I still managed to get great grades in all of my English classes.

Animal Farm, never started it.

To Kill a Mockingbird, never started it.

Lord of the flies, never started it.

I don't even remember what else I was supposed to be reading so either I didn't read it or it just wasn't that impactful as teachers expected it to be. I think the only time I remember actually reading a school required book was when we got to pick what it was. At one point, I picked Impulse by Ellen Hopkins for an individual study. We had to write an essay and make a visual component. I remember the board with the pill bottle and paper airplane stuck to the board. That was the moment I fell in love with Ellen Hopkins books.

If you haven't read an Ellen Hopkins novel, you should. She has such an interesting style of writing, often using a poetic format instead of your traditional paragraph. And all of her novels discuss delicate teenage issues- drug addiction, suicide, pressure and other serious issues. She has also breached the adult literature world and tackles those issues with the same style and honesty. They all have such heavy themes and topics and yet they are such easy reads and are books you dive into, coming back up for air only after having completely finished. The perfect books to avoid the dreaded doublebooking.

The only time I've ever been able to doublebook is if one is an audio book and even then they need to be completely different genres. There is no way I would be able to read and listen to two different suspense novels. I fell in love with audiobooks just last year. I have a long commute to work and sometimes I'm looking for a little more substance than the top 40 on the radio. Until last year, audiobooks were something I avoided because my love for reading is so strong that I didn't think I would enjoy someone else reading for me but I was pleasantly surprised. Starting off with the Harry Potter novels probably helped, books that I had previously read over and over again.

The downside of not allowing yourself to doublebook is when you are stuck in the middle of a book that hasn't fully captured you. Books that you struggle to pick up and simply have no desire to read anymore. Some would probably tell me to just stop reading it and start something else...but I can't. I have to see a book all the way through to the end. Some may say that's a blessing, others a curse.