Alternating difficult and easy books to avoid reading slumps

After a demanding nonfiction book I often stop reading for a week, not because I disliked it but because picking up another dense volume feels like work. Lately I've been alternating one challenging book with a brisk mystery or short story collection. My finished-book count has gone up, but more importantly I've stopped dreading the next chapter. Does anyone else deliberately keep an ‘easy’ book between harder reads, or do you read several at once?