Currently Reading #1: Multi-tasking

Image courtesy of my GoodReads profile
(and there are more books below these. Oh dear).

I am generally a one-book-at-a-time girl - the type of person who will read one work to the very end before starting the next, becoming as fully immersed in its world as possible. At the moment, however, I seem to be going through a spate of indecisiveness. I currently have four or five books on the go - each of which were started, kept me occupied for an afternoon or so, and then were discarded in favour of the new and shiny book I saw at the library, or on GoodReads¹, or on my bookshelf (yes, I abandoned some of these brand new books for a re-read of an old favourite²). I just consulted my GoodReads Currently Reading list to see exactly how bad this habit had gotten, and there are at least another two books on that list which I had gotten 30 or so pages into, and then promptly forgotten about. For shame (I like to finish what I've started, especially where books are concerned).
Amongst this list, however, there are three which I am actively flitting between (a new experience for me): Mira Grant's Blackout, John Green's Paper Towns, and Paul Murray's An Evening of Long Goodbyes - and I feel moderately justified in having them all on the go at once. I had been on the library waiting list for Paper Towns for months (and so An Evening of Long Goodbyes, which I was reading purely because I loved Skippy Dies, was temporarily placed on the back burner... until I kept coming back to it). Shortly after this, I realised that Blackout had been released, and with this realisation I remembered the amazing cliffhanger at the end of Deadline, and how long I had been waiting for its resolution, and that I had some book vouchers anyway... I couldn't resist. Hopefully this new reading method will work well - and at the moment I'm quite enjoying changing up what I'm reading to suit my mood (zombies before bed, for example, are a very bad idea). We shall see!
How do you prefer to read? I get the feeling I'm in a minority for not multi-tasking with my reading, but feel free to prove me wrong!

1. This is the first of many mentions of GoodReads in this blog post. I am not affiliated with them in any way, nor have they sponsored this post - I just find the site to be ridiculously handy (although it makes my to-read list even larger than it already is)
2. Dave Egger's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It had been too long.

On the difficulties of choosing a blog name

I've got to be honest - I find choosing an online handle to be a bit of an arduous process. It felt a lot easier in the early days of the web, when I was a teenager keen to show my personal tastes as obviously as possible (a Palahniuk quote perhaps, or just my favourite band at the time with my name after it) - now, however, I like something a bit more abstract.
As it turns out, the title I have chosen is a rehashing of my teenage technique - pick an author I love, choose a quote, use some words out of it. I have also just realised that I paraphrased said words. Nonetheless: Into The Volcano. Let's hope it doesn't annoy me ridiculously by the time a week or so has passed.

“And we will be ready, at the end of every day will be ready, will not say no to anything, will try to stay awake while everyone is sleeping, will not sleep, will make the shoes with the elves, will breathe deeply all the time, breathe in all the air full of glass and nails and blood, will breathe it and drink it, so rich, so when it comes we will not be angry, will be content, tired enough to go, gratefully, will shake hands with everyone, bye, bye, and then pack a bag, some snacks, and go to the volcano.” 

― Dave Eggers