That’s the sound of me enjoying being done with the summer quarter. Yup, after a grueling weekend of very late nights, the paper is done and turned in. Thank you to all of you who left me such nice and encouraging comments! I really enjoyed all the reading I did and the couple of personal digital library software systems I checked out. Maybe I will post the abstract and some especially interesting and readily available references later this week after I get over being sick and tired of it all.

Unfortunately, with all the regular work for class on top of the term paper, I wasn’t able to read Dance Night by Dawn Powell for the Slaves of Golconda discussion that starts today. I was just going to return the book to the library and cut my losses, but Danielle’s post about Powell has swayed me to try to fit it in amongst my other want to reads before fall quarter starts up in three weeks.

Speaking of want to read books, they have been accumulating.

One of my coworkers is a Neil Gaiman fan and has given me her signed copies of Death: The High Cost of Living, Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, and M is for Magic to read. They are not first editions or I would be even more terrified to have them in my possession than I already am!

I also was lucky enough to win a copy of Kate Pullinger’s The Mistress of Nothing in Litlove’s giveaway a month or so back.

Then there are the two books the nice people at Oneworld Classics sent me, The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo and Machiavelli’s The Prince. I took the Hugo with me today as my bus/train book. I’ve not actually gotten to the story yet because Hugo has a rather lengthy introduction arguing for the abolishment of the death penalty. He originally wrote the book to be the argument but it was so popular on the re-print he added the long essay. It is very interesting so far.

I also have a copy of Madame de Stael: The First Modern Woman by Francine Du Plessix Gray. A very nice person from Atlas Press recently saw my blog post about de Stael that I wrote back in May and offered me a copy of the book. It is coming out in paperback in October or November I think she said. I’m very excited to read this.

And serendipitously, a few days after hearing a story on NPR about a new book called The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley, and deciding that it was a book I would really like to read even though it is a very large book, I got an email offering a review copy. The publicist must be psychic. Too bad they all aren’t, that would spare me the emails for books they are sure I will love about parenting or finding the right man or a great new diet.

So there are my reading plans. I doubt I will be able to get to all of them, but I am forever comforted by having a plentiful supply because you just never know!