How I read

I should imagine most readers have a method, I have several but my favourite is to have at least three very good fiction books on the go at once. Books that completely absorb me and I will read cover to cover quite fast and can pick up and read often in snatched moments (Open University study trains you well for this, you can't afford to waste a minute) One of these will travel everywhere with me.
Then I will have three or four others "ongoing".
These are books with which I may be involved for some time and are most likely to be biographies,non-fiction or background to the main three.Woolf for Dummies is in with those. If a book in the fast three becomes a book that needs to be savoured and read slowly it goes into "ongoing" and is replaced...are you keeping up?
If I'm to read as much as I want I have to be organised, I need a system. Available time is limited and much as I'd like to be a lady of leisure who can read on a whim it's some way off, but I can't bear to miss out in the meantime.
When I'm on a roll my system works like a dream.
I start Book One, get about 100 pages in and then I start Book Two, 100 pages into that I read a bit more of Book One, then I make a good start on Book Three. So it goes round and there will always be something in progress to suit my every mood.Perhaps a 19th century novel, a children's book and something contemporary but a good mix.
I often reach a point in all this when I feel as if all the cogs are whirring along in perfect harmony and I just feel completely steeped in the reading,it's one those glorious moments that you can't quite describe but I bet you'll know exactly what I mean.
The flip side is that it doesn't always go like a dream in fact it feels more like a nightmare, as each successive book you pick up jars and judders, just doesn't work, doesn't draw me in, doesn't engage, nothing clicks.Then I flit all over the shelves and I don't feel quite right until it is sorted.
I suspect these are the tendencies of many bookaholics and right now things are going swimmingly and I'm feeling a bit of a sense of relief.
I don't want to pronounce to soon but finally its time has come.The book that I deserted as rubbish on Las Ramblas in Barcelona (yes probably invented Bookcrossing with it no less) has finally hooked me.In the 5 years since the ceremonial dumping just about everyone has taken pains to point out the error of my ways and I have almost lost sleep over parting with a book that everyone rates so highly.
  The incentive was the arrival of Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. It's a gorgeous looking book, catchy Ukrainian-tractor type title, inviting cover, oh yes and even the plot sounds good, all a bit luscious but NO.
I was not going to let myself open it until I had exorcised that ghost haunting my reading corridors since the Barcelona desertion, The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
The first 150 pages are good, in fact very good indeed heading for excellent,must have been too much wine and sun.But there are another 500 to go, it could all yet go pear shaped, you'll be the first to know.