Please tell me I'm not the only one! Right now I have 3 books started. They're all good - that's not the problem, it isn't like one or two of them are so-so and I'm bouncing back a forth between them. The problem is this habit I've picked up in the last few years. I never used to do this, was always a one-book-woman, now for some reason this happens to me. One if a Futuristic, one's a WL category romance, and the other is a new HC release..

I love having 3 or 4 books going at a time. One for the purse (something battered, usually), plus I like to have a contemp, a historical, a paranormal, and an erotica if one of the above isn't. That way if I get to a slow spot, or a too-tense spot, or just want something else, I put one down and pick up the other. Sometimes I finish the stack before starting a new one, like today, that is my plan. Down to one, which I want to finish today, ASAP.

i usually have at least 2 going. Sometimes 3 or 4.  I liken to keeping up with more than 1 TV show at a time. I try to keep to just 2 as much as possible though sometimes I have to drop my main read to read a game book or a book I posted and haven't read yet.  Sometimes I post a book that has a lot of copies in the system before I"ve read it and a couple of times I've been suprised with orders.  Or a game ends and I haven't read the book yet.

I usually have 1 postable book going in whatever genre/style that I'm in the mood to read.  Then I usually have an unpostable going for reading if I'm eating, reading in the "library" aka the bathroom.  I used to keep an unpostable in the car when I would have to wait for my daughter to get out of school.  She takes the bus now.

I can't do it and I never have figured out how anyone else does.  For me to get into a second book would have to mean that the first one wasn't holding my interest enough to even keep going with it, and if I picked up another book, I'd likely never go back to the first one.  And I have a hard time keeping anything besides the standouts sorted in my mind as it is.  I've read so many mediocre books in the last several years & if you threw one of those titles out there, I could tell you that I'd read it, but not be able to tell you a darned thing about it without reading the synopsis, and even then, I sometimes don't remember them:P  I do have something of a one track mind when it comes to most things though.  I stay very focused on  the task at hand, and tend to let other things go to the back burner until I've finished them.  I just presume this carries over into my reading as well.

I usually have one on audio book, one for the treadmill and then the real one I'm reading (but if that one is oustanding then I'll abandon everything else). Having a low attention span helps for once!

1 on audio and 1 reading is all I can manage to keep straight. I also prefer to rent tv series on dvd and watch them back to back over waiting for a week.

I've been trying this year to not do this but right now I have 4 started and not too far along into either. Usually I do this when I have an audio for the car/walking, an erotic romance that can only be read at home, a cozy mystery, and a 'regular' romance that can be take around with me. Right now I have a mystery, Nora Roberts' Tribute, Robyn Carr's Temptation Ridge, and Karen Robards' Magic Nights (think that's the title) and these don't really fit my 'rule' except for the mystery because the other 3 I think are ok for work/restaurants though Robards' has the typical 80/90's cover that's alittle 'suggestive'

I might have more than one going... one for downstairs.. and one for upstairs.  I sink 100% into the story while I am reading, so the "other" story line doesn't bother me since I am focused on the book I am reading at the moment. 

I can't do it myself- one reason being I just don't have time, and another being that I have a hard enough time trying to remember what's going on in just one book, when I have to keep coming back to it, sometimes days later!  I used to be able to read more than one at a time, but that was back before I had to juggle working FT and raising 2 kids and all that goes with it.  My brain just can't handle that much more information, not to mention the time.  It's hard enough to find time to keep up with one book, and now that American Idol has started again, my reading time has been cut even more!  Usually if I don't like a book or just can't get into it, I'll put it away and start something else.  Then, when I eventually get back to the one I put away, I usually have to start it over again, because I can't remember what I already read from it.

I can't do it It gets too confusing for me. If I can't get into a book I will put it down and try a little later but if the second time is still uninteresting then I move on. Like others said I have a one track mind.

I have a at work book, one at home, one on Kindle for appointments and such and usually one I am trying to finish for a game.

It used to work for me but this morning I picked up the book at home and had to way backtrack because i could not remember or figure out what note they were talking about. Most of the time reading the summery on the back gets me right back into the book I am holding in my hand, but I am thinking that it is time to scale back a bit.

I can't do it either.  It's just too hard for me to keep track of what's going on and get back into a book once I've started on another.  In my case I think it's age related...as in a combination of not being able to focus and remember things as well as when I was younger.  I have the same issues with day to day things around the house.  I go downstairs to get (or do) something, get down there and forget what I was there for in the first place -arrghh!  Then I go back upstairs and remember, but get sidetracked by something else and don't actually get the original item taken care of until hours later - if at all.   You'd think that being that scattered would lend itself to reading more than one book at a time, but no.  That's where the memory issue rears its ugly head.  I'd practically have to I have to re-read a good portion of the book to refresh my memory and get back into it.  It's just easier for me to stick with one book and read it all the way through - either that same day, or the next.  LOL That is, if/when I can remember where I left my glasses! ;-)

sorry, duplicate post. 

I'm glad others have more than one book going at a time. Sometimes I forget a book at work so when I get home I don't have to dither around trying to find a fill-in read, I can just pick up one of the other books I'm reading. I finished one of the 3 I had started, so I'm down to TWO now. Once those are finished I have to seriously try to have just one going at a time. I have no idea how I picked up this habit - I do know that sometimes a book is so intense that I can hardly pick it up for all the tension in the plot so I would pick up an alternate read to lighten things up til I went back to the more intense read, but even that isn't much of a reason for having a short stack of paperbacks all with a bookmark in them.

I "can" do it but I usually don't.  Unless it some kind of anthology or possibly a biography, its too much to keep up with.  For me anyway.

I usually only read one at a time but right now I'm reading 2...one is a hardback library book over 800 pages and is big/bulky so I have a paperback so I can easily read while working out on my stationary bike. 

I thought I was the only one who does the multiple books at one time. My family laughs at me, when they see 3 books open or 3 books that have 3 bookmarkers in them.