True reading confession

One of my goals this weekend was to finish all the books that have been sitting around half-finished. I ended up finishing three, which was pretty good.

I would describe my attention span as "average," but I'm always starting books while in the middle of other books. I don't think it's just boredom; some of it is circumstance. Something else will catch my eye, or I'll have need to hurry up on some particular book. I'll jump to a book I'm reviewing, then jump back with varying levels of success. I have met a decent number of people who say they can never read more than one book at once, and I used to be like that -- but I don't know what happened. I think it's becoming a bad habit.

Just like with multitasking, I think by jumping from book to book I am convincing myself that I'm getting more reading done than I actually am. True, I did say I finished 3 books, but they were all at least half-done, and maybe it did take me longer to get into them when I finally got down to business. And take a book I didn't finish, but managed to get through a chunk of, Jonathan Franzen's debut THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY. I read about 150 pages of it, wasn't overly impressed but wanted to finish to have an informed opinion on why I didn't like it. When I came back to it, I found myself getting more caught up in its plot of political intrigue (more on that later, I'm sure). Maybe in that case I needed a break to get more engaged. Then again, if it was so gripping, why did it sit around for six weeks?

Anyway, including 27TH CITY, I'm now down to six (!?!?! I have a problem) half-read books, but I may quit one because it was more boring than the Franzen book in its first pass.