Booking through Thursday (A Thursday meme I’m actually doing on Thursday!):
Do you get on a roll when you read, so that one book leads to the next, which leads to the next, and so on and so on?
I don’t so much mean something like reading a series from beginning to end, but, say, a string of books that all take place in Paris. Or that have anthropologists as the main character. Or were written in the same year. Something like that… Something that strings them together in your head, and yet, otherwise could be different genres, different authors…
I don’t read this way at all, but perhaps I should give it a try. Instead of looking for books that are similar, I purposely go for ones that are different. My goal is to get variety, not similarity. So if I finish an 18C novel, for example, I might pick up something contemporary next, or if I finish a book of literary criticism, I might turn to science or history. I worry about getting bored or bogged down, I suppose, particularly since it takes me a while to finish a book. And there are so many different things I want to read, that I’m reluctant to read two books from the same general category in a row.
But I do like the idea of letting one book lead to another. It would be fun to see how long a chain of connections I could create. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see if I could maintain it for a number of months or even a year? The only way to do it would be to try to make creative connections and bring as much variety into it as possible, to include fiction and nonfiction and books from all time periods. Otherwise, I’d get bored. But if I had a long chain of connections, then I’d have a kind of reading narrative, a story of how all my books fit together. That would be kind of fun, wouldn’t it?
Of Books and Bicycles 
what wonderful questions you pose! I am the type of reader who would, if I liked something, read everything by that author, just because i would want to prolong my love for that author and writing style a little longer…
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I read like you do, for variety. I have to read around a topic or an author for work, so I like radically different books for pleasure. I’ll be interested to see if you can make your network of connections work!
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That would be a fun idea – finding a connection to the next book on purpose. I wonder how far you could go…
I am sometimes a bit too planned with my reading but I always leave room to just grab something off the shelf if I feel like it.
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great idea!
I have a list of books that I have bought or borrowed from the library or just tagged “read this eventually” and it is a VERY random list. I know that someone somewhere had mentioned the book or author and often the book is interesting, but more often I scratch my head and ask “why did I pick that book”?
I’ve often thought about keeping notes so I know why I am reading what I’m reading…because it’s all connected somehow. That’s not quite the same as your suggestion…but I think it’s an interesting one.
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I think my reading tends to be somewhat connected and I think I should try and be more random sometimes, but I’m not sure I consciously think about it. I have thought it might be fun to read books that are connected in some way–reading one book and then choosing another that is in some way connected–similar time or something about the narrator, or maybe NF on the same subject, but I’ve never tried it.
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Hepzibah — that’s great, I wish sometimes that I had the patience to keep reading an author book after book! But I’m always off to the next new thing …
Litlove — oh, yes, I can see why a contrast between work reading habits and pleasure reading habits would be refreshing!
Verbivore — too much planning bores me, and I wish it didn’t! I’d like to read in an more systematic way, with some spontaneity still thrown in there, of course.
Kittent — I wish I had more detailed documentation on why I read what I read and even more so, why I put books on my TBR list — I have that experience of wondering why I chose something too!
Danielle — wouldn’t it be interesting to try to connect our reading in that way? But my moods change so much that I don’t stay interested in any one thing for that long.
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I read like you do Dorothy but sometimes wish I could just see where one book might lead to another. It would be fun to try it and track it and then at the end of a little story of how you got from book A to book Z.
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Stefanie — yes it would be fun, although I doubt I’ll do it — it would require too much discipline!
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