I Only Read One Book at a Time…Kind of

I was sad to break my blogging streak, but I went on vacation this past weekend at Mirror Lake in Utah.  I had blogged for 35 days straight without missing a day.  It had to end sometime.

I probably won’t write much about the vacation because it’s hard for me to write about what’s happening in my life now.  It just doesn’t have the perspective of looking back and it tends to read like a bunch of facts instead of a story.  I will say, though, that I thought my kindle was broken.  I LOVE reading on vacations and I was very sad that my broken kindle didn’t allow me to do this on the last day of our trip.  Marla was the only one that gave me the properly shocked reaction I was looking for.  My two boys were running around the trailer and accidentally knocked it off the night stand.  It only fell two feet and when I turned it off, the screen went blank. I kept holding the power button to reset it, but nothing happened.  When I got home, I got online to troubleshoot it.  Turns out, you do hold the power button to reset it, you just have to do it longer than I was.  It reset fine.  Crisis averted.

Me and my son at Mirror Lake

“Books are more real when you read them outside.”

-Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

Everyone was very nice about my kindle being broken on the trip and offered books for me to read.  When I said that I only read one book at a time, my husband laughed. “You do not!”  Okay, he’s kind of right.  Here are the books I’m reading right now:

• The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
• Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual
• The Twilight Saga Official Illustrated Guide
• Grimm’s Fairy Tales
• The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan

So I only read one novel at a time. Short stories and scriptures don’t count.  It’s one of my “rules” to not start another novel until I’ve finished the one I’m reading because I don’t read for the sake of reading.  I like to finish stories and it’s really hard for me to not finish a book once I’ve started it.  This makes me really selective of the books I read because it’s hard for me to put it down even if it’s trashy.  I’m getting better, though.  Even though it was nice of my dad to offer his Mitt Romney book for me to read, I didn’t see the point of reading 20 pages and then going back to the book I was reading.

Some people will ask how I can keep books straight if I’m reading more than one.  It kind of reminds me of how people will watch many TV shows on a weekly basis and not get them mixed up.  They’re different stories – it’s not hard.  I will say, though, that reading more than one novel at a time will give me very strange dreams sometimes.  Apparently my unconscious mind can’t keep the stories straight as well as my conscious mind can.