The Benefits of Reading Two Books at Once

I was 25-years-old and living in New York City. I had just finished my first novel, set to dip my toes into the literary world for the first time. Then, I spilled water on my computer, and lost the entire thing. My heart sank.  But instead of crying, rushing to try to fix my computer, or calling some sort of life coach to get to the bottom of how I’d allowed myself to lose two years of work in the first place, I walked to a book store.  I was in need of consolation. And the only thing that would make me feel better was a new book. A night book to be exact.  I have always divided my reading into two general categories: day books and night books. Day books are something that require my focus, that demand an acute level of concentration. They’re often books that I’m reading for research. They’re books that I’ve chosen because there is something in their subject matter that I want to study.  Night books, for me, are more of an immersive escape. They are books that I can’t wait to disappear into and look forward to reading each night. The type of book that brings me joy.  The type of book that makes me forget. And, at that moment, I really needed to forget. So there I was, walking the aisles of my local bookstore—the idea of my own novel gracing those shelves never further away—searching for a night book to take home with me.  I read every genre, from mysteries and family dramas to poetry collections and biographies. The benefit of reading more than one book at a time is that no matter how different the two books are, they always end up speaking to each other in ways I couldn’t have imagined. How is a case study on the future of wildfires speaking to a love story between theoretical physicists? Disparate books with seemingly nothing in common suddenly and impossibly start to feel like they are talking to each other as much as they are talking to me. And though the categories of day books and night books may be helpful, I typically resist drawing a stark binary divide. While a book may start off in one category, some books end up moving between the two. Day reading may quite literally move into the night. A recent example is Sophie Elmhirst’s A Marriage at Sea, an astounding true story of a couple who found themselves shipwrecked and fighting for their lives. I started reading it in the afternoon and didn’t even attempt to stop until I reached the last page at midnight, a beautiful fever dream of a read. Similarly, there are night books that I revisit in the light of day because there is something I can’t stop thinking about—like the psychological verisimilitude in Bruce Holsinger’s family drama, Culpability, Holsinger’s heartbreaking (and deeply human) final twist taking me back to page one for a second read. With my novel lost, the last two years of my painstaking work gone in an unforgiving instant, I was still alone, and in shock, in those bookstore aisles. But being surrounded by all those books, I could feel myself taking a deep breath. Books provide us with refuge from disappointments and heartbreak and loss. They’re the best reminder that joy will always come when you go looking for it. Storytelling will never not be a form of rebellion. Everything which is lost can be found again. What’s more, reading multiple books at once reminds us that we always have a choice about what we do next.