The end of the semester is upon me. I’ll have an update about how I did in my stats class as soon as I have a final grade, given that you guys are stakeholders in that class. It’s a strange situation, as I am feeling the typical end-of-semester relief, and yet in fact work, and the importance of that work, will ramp up  significantly: today, I start writing my dissertation in earnest. Thanks to my fellowship, I will have a summer of wonderfully unstructured time, but the pressure will be on, as if I’m going to graduate in one year and fulfill my goal of completing my PhD in four years, I realistically need to write the better part of three chapters this summer. I’m ready for the challenge. (I hope!)

So I’m trying to keep my personal reading schedule light, given all the reading I’ll be doing for my diss, especially because I hate hate hate putting something on my reading list and not getting to it. But I do need to have books that aren’t related to that project. I don’t know about you, but when I’m working on something long and involved, I really need to read stuff that has nothing to do with that project. I am someone who gets lost and alone in his own mind, very frequently– Pat Sullivan, the head of my program, says I chase rabbits in my head– and if I’m not careful I can get kind of antisocial and isolated when working on stuff. Other books become my trail of breadcrumbs.

So what I know I want to read this summer, non-academics wise, is

• That bad boy you see above, which conveniently just arrived this weekend, on the first day of my summer
• Jacob Bacharach’s The Bend of the World I’ve been waiting a long time to have the chance to really give Bacharach’s first novel the attention it deserves. Probably my favorite prose stylist writing online, and a lovely fellow in many ways. Maybe better to find this one at your local bookseller but in any case you should get your hands on it.
• The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, by Tom Angleberger. My niece gave it to me for Christmas. Ordinarily I would avoid anything Star Wars branded like the plague, but everything about its concept seems so endearingly bizarre that I’m really looking forward to it.
• It wouldn’t be summer if I didn’t read Treasure Island and a trashy fantasy novel or two. (I say trashy with love.)

That should be more than enough. I’m excited. (By the way: none of the links are affiliate links or whatever.)