From my experience, a nonfiction book and a novel can work simultaneously. One is an account of a subject; the other is a kind of slip into dreamland. Totally different sides of the brain… for me, at least. Juggling different nonfiction texts seems to work fine and dandy, too. All of us being former students, I think academia molds us into nonfiction multitaskers. Think about the average high school student’s reading list: a book about the settlement of Jamestown for history class, a political satire for government, a biology text for science, a memoir for music appreciation, a cultural narrative for a language class, etc. So we’ve been taught how to open and close nonfiction books concurrently. I think it’s a bit trickier for novels.

I, for one, can’t read multiple fiction works. From the first page of a novel, my imagination begins to create a world. I immediately meet the characters and empathize with their emotions. If I did that with two or three worlds at a time, things might start to overlap and all of a sudden I’m feeling hostile toward EMMA because of something that pissed me off in ATONEMENT. The authenticity of the reading experience would be corrupted. So I stick to one novel at a time, but I could do multiple nonfiction titles.

Speaking of fiction vs. nonfiction, your January 21, “Discovery and Credibility…” post got me thinking/blogging about the topic: http://www.sarahmccoy.wordpress.com.

Thanks for passing on the awesome MOTHER JONES essay!

Yours truly, Sarah