Sometimes, I read two books at a time.  I start one, and then either my interest wanes or my mind drifts.  So I pick up another book.  And sometimes, they are kind of a strange duo.  

For instance, a few days ago I started "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" by Chuck Barris, his supposed autobiography about his days in the 70's as both host of The Gong Show and CIA spy.  Hmm.  The Gong Show stuff is hilarious, but I felt it bogged down during the spy-caper tales.  I haven't finished it yet.  But anyway I started another book:  "Autobiography of a Face"  by Lucy Grealy, all about her difficult battle with cancer.   These two books are completely at odds, yet I am reading them concurrently.

It got me thinking.  Have any of you read two (or more) books at the same time which seemed to be very strange matches?? 

I have always read more than one book at a time. I guess that's why I don't finish one very quickly! I tend to keep one in every room and in my car!

I like to have different kinds of books going at once. I've got The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd in the kitchen at the moment, The Girls by Lori Lansens is in my office, and  My Land and My People by the Dalai Lama is in my bedroom. In my car cassette player is Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich. Guess these are pretty diverse choices, but I like them all!!!

I'm currently reading both The Witching Hour by Anne Rice and The Shack by William Young.  Can't get much different than that.....one about the devil and witches and the other about God.  LOL!!!

I often have at least 2 books going and 2 recorded books (one in the car and one in the house).  Once I was listening to two simiar recorded books read by the same reader.  I stayed confused until I stopped one book while I finished the other.  The books are usually (but not always) a fiction and a non-fiction.

susan

I usually have a couple going and they're usually very different.  Right now I have 4 books going. I started Pride & Prejudice and I just cannot get into it at all.  I am so not liking Darcy much or even Elizabeth. So I make myself read a bit of it here and there. I have Lady Beware by Jo Beverly started.  It got eaten by a postal machine on it's way to me.  So it's my read while eating or in the tub book.  My main read right now is Real Vampires Live Large (I'm blanking on the author).  I got on a vampire kick while reading the Sookie Stackhouse series. But I'm waiting for my library to get me the next in the series so I picked this one up to tide me over.  I picked up Madame Bovary at the library and started that today. 

So I have 2 classics, a paranormal and a historical romance going.  I guess 5 books if you count the western I have in the car and started reading while waiting for my daughter to get out of Tae Kwon Do the other day.

Oh and I've been listening to The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan which is a memoir.

I always have two books going.  Currently I have three.  I started That Summer Place awhile back,  and got through the first short story quickly, the other two havent grabbed me as much so it's been slow going.  I'm also reading The Lottery Winner by Mary Higgins Clark (I always have one mystery going as I have so many to read.) and started Weekend Warriors by Fern Michaels today.  I like to read in bed and I have the bookwedge for paperbacks so always have to have a paperback going, thus Weekend Warriors was picked!

I'm reading a nonfiction book about childrearing ("Our Babies, Ourselves," by Meredith Small) and meanwhile reading paranormal romances - the latest was "Succubus on Top," by Richelle Mead. It's a pretty silly mixture of wholesome and not! (And they are both good books, might I add.)

i can do two at a time if one is fiction and one non-fiction.

I'm often reading two - or more! - vastly dissimilar books at a time. For example, recently I was reading Haunted by Kelley Armstrong (urban fantasy about the ghost of a witch) along with A Question of Torture by Alfred McCoy (nonfiction about the history of torture in CIA interrogation). I seem to like to pair the grim political stuff with something much lighter; awhile ago I was reading a memoir by a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner (Enemy Combatant by Moazzam Begg) along with a Harlequin romance...