Biting off too many books

At the moment I am reading four books at the same time, no maybe five lets list them

Something Happened - Joseph Heller (Story book)
The LEAN Toolbox (The essential guide to LEAN transformation). - J. Bicheno & M. Holweg (Management book)
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey (Self improvement book)
The Enemy - Lee Child (Who done it book)
The 33 Strategies of War - Robert Greene (Strategy/management/history/war book).

There are a couple of other books I have half heartily on the go but somehow have stopped in the middle of them and marked the page with a post-it note.  Then there's the odd few waiting in the wings to be picked up.  When I do allocate time to read these books or take extensive notes from them the time is short and periodical.  Certainly in some cases not on a daily basis but more of a weekly or two weekly basis depending on the mood I happen to be in.  I don't know if it is only me but I would like to know if other people have the same problem.  Do they?  Or have I bitten off more than I can chew.  Even though I must admit to enjoying reading each of these books and know they deserve more.  The one problem I do come across is when I remember something I have read but confused the story line or the book I got it from.  Heller's book can't be mixed because it is pretty different from any thing else.  Child's book I have only started this week after buying it out of a charity shop for the fantastic price of £2.50 as opposed to the five or six quid it would normally cost and the story is again something far different from anything else so it can not suffer from overlapping syndrome.  However, the management books and self improvement books can occasionally become confusing as I read one of them and then recall something else quite similar but different in another book.  At which point I wonder if it is my memory failing me, whether I have a touch of mad-cows-disease or whether it was a dream I had which has somehow trespassed into my conscious memory because it has nothing better to do.  At this point I have a head full of written passages and no idea where they come from.  It's a wonderful insanity and I quite rather enjoy it.

The problem is I do like to read books.  But I do also get bored with them.  It's like I have some kind of attention-deficit disorder of the literary kind.  I also like the feeling when I can say I have actually read a book.  For example when I walk through a train and I see people reading books I always take in the title and automatically recognise if I've read it.  (Down with the E-Reader) If I have read a book but forgot the thing afterwards I can actually say yes I read it and usually I can remember the author.  Authors are important, in fact all writers are important.  Possibly more so than actors in a film but we only tend to remember the actors and take no interest in the scrip writers.  It's a shame if you ask me.  Then there are the books I have read on more than one occasion, these still bring me great pleasure.  For there is always something I come across whether a sentence, phrase or paragraph which hits me like a lightening bolt because it is either well written or says something in a significant way.  An example would be Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, every so often I'll pick this up and re read it.  It's a book about quality and a man who is trying to stop on a road trip but at the same time wondering if he is having a mental breakdown.  Maybe it is a gender specific book.  A book men would read but women would not.  If anyone has a comment please add it.  I can't help it, I like it.  Sometimes I notice the books I read tend to be more from American authors than British ones.  Some classical British writers I just have not read.  Charles Dickens is one of them, Happy Birthday Charlie (he's 200 today by the way).

Perhaps all of this adds into my introvert personality type.  I'm the one who likes to sit indoors with a ... you guessed it good book, piece of cake and cup of coffee.  But I do sometimes try a read when having a more alcoholic type drink,  unfortunately this can lead to re-reading the same page or paragraph over and over again and still not knowing what it is I have read.  Coffee is far better.  If it weren't for the cake I'd certainly of said I had bitten off more than I can chew.