Struggling to read more than one at a time

Whenever I talk to people about reading they always list off the books they are reading with about three or four on the go. On friend told me that he couldn’t read just one book at a time and needed different styles and authors to mix it up and make life more interesting. But however hard I try it is not natural for me to have more than one book on the go at a time. Last night after finishing a good number of pages of Love in the Time of Cholera I picked up the Ukrainian history book Borderlands but found it hard to concentrate and so ended up putting it to one side.

Maybe you are just born a one book at a time reader or can handle three or four at a time? Maybe you can teach yourself to hold numerous plot lines and characters? But for me it is proving too difficult to do after years of just a single book at a time, which is a shame because I’m sure mixing it up more would be entertaining and could even be complimentary to the books – like mixing a good wine.