The pleasure to be gained from concurrent reads

ILLUSTRATION: JULIANA VIDO

Reading brings with it enormous benefits. It relaxes, informs and encourages empathy, as well as providing entertainment.

But it does have a reputation for being time-consuming and, if there are few moments to spare, the idea of ploughing through an entire novel or working through a weighty piece of non-fiction can seem somewhat indulgent, not to mention daunting. A lack of time is seen as one of the biggest barriers to reading for pleasure, but there could be a simple, if slightly counterintuitive-sounding, solution: read more books, all at once. Need convincing?

The first thing to establish is that there’s no rule demanding that a reader must stay devoted to a single book from start to finish (there’s also no law against giving up on a book halfway through, but that’s another story), and for many a bibliophile, the idea of monogamy in reading matter is ridiculous. Letting go of the notion that a solitary book must be chosen, committed to and grudgingly trudged through, come what may, can be difficult, but it’s absolutely worth it.