JonathanStrange

Well, this certainly lived up to its advance billing. I loved it. Won't say more, since I still have to write a review.

I had an interesting moment on Thursday afternoon in my office when I looked around me--stacks of xeroxes for my fall semester course packs, e-mails from students wanting to meet about the M.A. program, the list of all the new incoming graduate students--and realized that my sabbatical is definitively over. That I'd better stop mourning it, too, because all this stuff is pretty fun if only I can get my head around the fact that I'm not writing full-time any more! It was the list of new students that was really the clincher--I remember how excited I was when I started grad school, but also how excited I was EVERY September for school to start after the long, hot, BORING months of July and August. Where you check out your twelve books from the library (having persuaded them to give you an adult rather than a children's card), stay up all night reading & then find yourself about twenty-four hours later having literally read all twelve and with nothing to read again. One of the many, many things I like about adult life is that with the combination of Columbia's library, the NYPL, the guy who sells used paperbacks on Broadway and 113th and Amazon (plus occasional bookstore incursions) I can actually usually have enough books to read... It was certainly pleasant to be able to justify reading Jonathan Strange as work because of the review part of it; one of the things I will have to give up when school starts is this compulsive large-volume reading I've been doing this year, both for work and for fun.