I am now in week eight of ten in my final quarter of library school. I have been looking forward to this week of class because we have finally gotten to literature. But Saturday when I settled in to do the readings for this week I was greatly disappointed. I tweeted my boredom and disappointment and got some sympathy but I need more! Well, I don’t need more sympathy really. Just being a tad melodramatic there. What was disappointing about the reading? Instead of being on something interesting like, I don’t know, current issues in literary studies, I got to read a citation study.

A citation study looks at what scholars cite in their published work. In this case the study, done in 2003, compared its findings to one done 1983. It found that literature scholars still predominantly cite to monographs, though citations to journal articles increased by a few percentage points. And it goes on and on like this. Exciting, eh?

When Bookman and I were running some errands he asked how school was going and I got a little whiny. He asked what my grade in the class is so far. I’ve gotten an ‘A’ on everything so far, I told him. And then he tossed out a grenade, “What if you just decided you were done and didn’t do anymore work for the final few weeks? Would you still pass?” I looked at him in wide-eyed astonishment. “Yes, I’d get a ‘C’ but I’d still pass.”

And then he looked at me with a sort of “well?” look. “I can’t just quit!” I said. “What if you just made a half-ass effort then?” He said. “The class isn’t that hard,” I said, “and I feel like I’m only making a half-ass effort now in spite of getting good marks.” “Okay,” he said, “so what if you make a quarter-ass effort?”

I was quiet for a bit, thinking. “No,” I said finally. “I can’t do it. Even if all I need is a ‘C’ I can’t not do the work. As tempting as it is to just check out now, I have to push on and finish up the final weeks. I don’t want a transcript that says A, A, A, A, C. What does that say to potential employers?”

I am probably being sacrilegious, but I felt like Jesus in the desert being tempted by Satan. I’ve called Bookman a devil from time to time in jest, but it seems like my unconscious mind new more than I realized!

With the end of school on the horizon and speeding ever closer by the day, I’ve begun stockpiling books. Not that I haven’t been stockpiling books for, like, forever, but the pile of to-reads on the corner of my desk is growing.

I’ve got a couple of gardening books on actual garden design and two books on Emily Dickinson’s garden on request at the library one of which is ready for me to pick up. On its way in addition to this is Nick Hornby’s Shakespeare Wrote for Money. I’ve read all his other Believer collections on books and on a whim requested this one the other day. I have other book requests at the library but I am in a queue for those and there is no telling when they will arrive. Probably all at once because that’s the way these things go.

I recently brought home a couple books that I requested from the library where I work. Myth and Society in Ancient Greece because with all of the reading of ancient Greek plays I have been doing I thought it would be fun to learn a little about what it was like to actually live during that time. The other book I brought home is The Dyer’s Hand by W.H. Auden. These are essays he wrote and supposedly there is one in the book about writing criticism that seems like it might be especially interesting.

In addition to these, I have two ARCs that I am looking forward to reading, Sugar in My Bowl, a book of essays edited by Erica Jong on what women want. The perpetual question. The other ARC is Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, a sort of memoir in books that I couldn’t resist. I have an ARC on my Kindle called Monoculture: How One Story is Changing Everything. It looks at the stories we tell about ourselves as a culture and how one particular story is starting to create a sort of story monoculture and how that affects and shapes who we are.

Also on my desk is George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones because Bookman loves the series and there is a TV show now that he wants to watch and I’d like to watch too but feel like I should read the books first. You know how that goes.

My final assignment for class is due Wednesday, June 8th but I’m pretty sure that I will be done by Saturday, June 4th. I have already put in for some time off from work beginning June 8th and going through Monday, June 13th. I have no doubt I will have plenty to read.