On Being supervisor of multiple persons with multiple goals

I'm reading the work of three students quite closely at the moment - two PhD students writing novels and an honours student writing about magic realist literature. As a newly qualified supervisor, it's interesting how challenging it is to be switching between three huge chunks of writing in a week and trying to read them each as their authors need me to read them.

Also interesting how enjoyable this part of my job is.

Reading

I was wondering, also as a newly qualified supervisor, how much you need to be on top of the genres in which you are reading. I too have a potential PhD student interested in magic realism. He has given me a novel similar to the style that he wants to adopt, but how much do I need to be on top of the genre to be able to suitably support him?