Feature and Follow Friday (1)

I've been pretty hesitant to join this meme, because I really don't like being forced to follow certain people, but I do like the idea of it. So I suspect I'll be participating only on some Fridays, when the blog being featured is one that I think I might like, based on their reviews, look, etc. Anyway, you can visit either of the host sites for more details. Here's a link to Alison Can Read. Now to this week's question:

Q: Do you read one book at a time or do you switch back and forth between two or more?

A: When I was younger, I used to sit down and just read books from cover to cover. That was, for the most part, a really good way to read and I miss it. However, college broke me. In college, I had to read a lot of really boring books for class (some of them I actually did read; some I pretended to read). Anyway, I came up with a great system, whereby I would trade myself a chapter of a fun book for a chapter of a boring book.

Now, though, I seem to be unable to go back to just reading one book at a time. I'm always reading at least two, because if I just have the one book and it turns out to be slow-going, I need something to keep me from slacking on my reading until it's done.

At one point, I was regularly reading 8 books at a time (two from NetGalley pre-pub, one from NG that had an overdue review, one from my personal collection, one from the library, one from the publisher for review...) I can't remember all of my categories right now, but suffice it to say that it was absurd and very slow. Now I generally have a main book and a secondary book, with the secondary covering my non-ARC/review copies.