How many books can you read at once?

Or maybe the question should be: How many books should you read at once? I always used to have at least three books on the go and I’d flip back and forth, depending on my mood. If you’re struggling with War and Peace, then reading a few pages of P.G. Wodehouse will refresh you, ready for the next assault. This was the theory, but in practice I found it really wasn’t working. I’d read a few pages of a challenging book, then several chapters of a light-hearted one, then switch to another book altogether and read that for a bit. Naturally, by the time I got back to the difficult book, I would have no idea what was going on and spend ages trying to figure it all out. Clearly, something had to change.

So, I began reading one book at a time. This worked very well until I decided to read the final book in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall  trilogy. Although she is heralded as a genius and won the Booker Prize for Wolf Hall and its follow-up Bring Up the Bodies, I know that not everyone gets on with her work. These books are hundreds of pages long and her biggest fan could hardly describe her novels as page-turners. Dan Brown and Jilly Cooper don’t need to worry about the competition.

I, however, am a fan. I loved Wolf Hall  and half fell in love with Thomas Cromwell, which isn’t a sentence I ever expected to be writing. I enjoyed Bring Up the Bodies, but not as much. The Mirror and the Light, the third (and even longer) book was waiting. And waiting. During lockdown people took up all sorts of pastimes – baking sourdough bread, doing jigsaw puzzles, mastering Zoom calls, home schooling their children (aagh!) – and a few decided to read the third book in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy. At any rate, they said they did. At 875 pages, you certainly need a lot of free time on your hands. I was far too busy putting together photobooks of holidays past, as well as clearing out every drawer, shelf and cupboard in our house, to take on the challenge.

This year I decided it was time. I’ll save you the suspense and say that I did finish it, but it wasn’t an easy read. After a while it began to feel as though I’d been reading that book for most of my adult life. My gosh, it’s a complicated web of intrigue, plotting and betrayal, not to mention a cast of characters that runs to many pages. So, I slipped back into my old habit of reading other books at the same time for a bit of light relief and when I went back to the Mirror, I had even less idea of who’d done what to whom and why. In the end I decided that I’d never distinguish between the Dukes of Suffolk, Norfolk and Pitchfork and I just stopped trying. I still don’t know why I didn’t have the strength of mind to banish it from the house and my life months ago.

But now I have my reward: not only am I happily reading Mary Poppins Comes Back, but also The Strawberry Thief, Joanne Harris’ sequel to Chocolat. Yes, I know, two at once, but the plot lines and characters are so easy to grasp after The Mirror and the Light. Once I’ve finished them, I’m eyeing up Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Why? Because it’ll be such a relief when I’ve finished it.