I've read in more than place recently that many writers find it difficult to read while writing and will forego it completely to finish their own work. I know I'm probably a bit of an odd case - I've had trouble falling asleep since I was a little and I have always read myself to sleep. I am impossible at night if I don't have something to read in bed - and I'm totally one of those panicked type readers who have more books then they need when they leave the house for a trip. It's interesting to me though that writers in particular would not read as much as they write - it seems to me as if the two are fundamentally intwined somehow and by ignoring one you risk damage to the other.

But that could just be me and everyone else is doing just fine without the reading.

On top of all that, I never read only one book at a time. Granted, I might blow through a book in a night or two if it really keeps me on the edge of my seat (Harry Potter has done this, LK Hamilton - Joe Hill pretty much had me nonstop through his collection, etc.), but generally I have several books going at once. Part of this is because I read several different types of books for review. I always have one YA book going, right now it is Endymion Spring which I think will be perfect for the last entry in my Sept column. I also have one adult book going, in this case The Last of the Red Hot Poppas which so far is about the murder of the governor of LA and promises all sorts of political insanity. (Fiction maybe, but it reads like truth.) I also have a book off my TBR pile, which is shrinking more and more with each week! Yea! Right now I'm deep in a real doorstopper - Gallipoli. It's very well written but so frustrating to read - I can't believe how badly humanity can be at prosecuting a war when you consider how much practice we have had at killing each other. (I'm not talking morality of war here, just the landing of men on wrong beaches, failure to provide reinforcements - officers who stand up in the line of fire to show they aren't afraid and promptly get killed off just like everyone thought they would. Stupidity!) It's a hard book to read because it is so frustrating, but my goal is just ten pages a night and then I move on to something else. This way I will read the 500 pages inside of two months and not get furious and throw it across the room. Not all of my TBR pile books are tough like this but I was due for a big one and I'm glad that I'm zipping along on it.

And then I usually throw in some other book I need to review or think I want to review and I just want to read. Last one up was Blood on the Saddle and before that The Circle. Right now I'm reading a collection of essays by Ernest Gaines, Mozart & Leadbelly. It's really really good and I'm enjoying it a lot. I imagine I will be done with this in a couple of days and certainly write a review for Voices of NOLA.

So four books for me right now which really isn't all that much. Usually I have at least five or six going - keeping in mind that most of these YA titles go very very fast. I try to plan out my reviewing schedule for Bookslut and Eclectica several months in advance (especially the columns) so I know what I need to read, but I change the schedule all the time. (Rangergirl moved from Sept to Oct due to its storyline - oops forgot that - I'm still reading Rangergirl but I bumped it back to get Endymion Spring done for the Sept column!) None of this is concrete of course. I could just not submit anything to Bookslut one month and I imagine it would be fine. But I have found that the publishers like that they can rely on me to review fairly regularly and all of that helps with the writing because the more my reviews are out there, the more my own words can get read as well.

And speaking of which - I'm doing the final revisions on another chapter of my book which will stand alone as a short story at Storyglossia this month. "Mercy Flight" is about one of those flights where you have to save someone's life which are fairly common in AK as most of the villages are so farflung. But what happened on this flight is not at all what anyone would expect and honestly it is one of the closest pieces to complete nonfiction that I have in the book. Here's what I'll leave you with - I use the phrase "fucking nuns" quite a bit in this story. I'll keep you posted on when it goes up at Storyglossia and you can find out just what I'm talking about.

In the meantime - do you read and write at the same time? And how many titles to you juggle?