Three Books I'm Currently Reading

There are three books I'm in the middle of reading right now...and there seems to be no end in sight for any of them.  I have been slowly muddling through William Makepeace Thackeray's classic novel of English high society of the early nineteenth century, titled Vanity Fair...I'm a little past halfway through it.  I've also begun a non-fiction book, The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee.   The language in this history of modern genetics is quite well-written and simplified for the non-scientist layman, but there are places where it still gets a bit too technical for me...I suppose there was no way of avoiding that, though.  The third book is Two-Handed Engine, that old science fiction short story collection of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore's works from the mid-twentieth century that I've been working on for an extended time.  I'm nowhere close to finishing that one, either...

I have nothing in particular against Vanity Fair other than I don't like any of its characters and am tired of reading about highly stratified European society from the nineteenth century.  Enough, already: I've resolved to take a break from this type of fiction once I'm done with this book.  I have a more favorable opinion so far of Mukherjee's exposition...I like how he tells his story and makes it personal and much more gripping than just dry science.  As for Kuttner and Moore, I'd probably have already finished their story collection had I not kept adding books to my reading regimen (like Vanity Fair and The Gene)...