au revoir pleasure reading, you will be missed

Tomorrow will inaugurate semester 2 of my English graduate program.

My days will soon be consumed with these

Well, sanity, it was nice knowing you.

As much as I actually, truly, am excited to learn how to "find meaning beyond the clause," I always look at the beginning of a semester as a sort of execution to my love of pleasure reading.

Because after a day of reading textbooks, reading student's papers, and reading more textbooks, the last thing you want to come home and do is plop down on the couch and open up a book.

Nope. You want to watch trashy tv. You want to blog. You want to interact with a real, live human being. My gosh, you want to move. You want to run.

You want to do anything other than read some more.

But, let's pretend that tomorrow is not the beginning of a new semester. Let's pretend that I'll have all the desire and time to read whatever I want.

Here are the books I am currently lusting after:

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

I don't even care that this only has 2 1/2 stars on amazon.com. I will read (and have read) anything David Sedaris puts on a piece of paper. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

I've been intrigued since his postmodern plagiarism "experiment" in Reality Hunger. Now I want to go back in time and read Enough About You by David Shields

Okay, so I will find time for this book. I've been reading excerpts of this book, and it is such an incredibly refreshing view concerning marriage. The question, "what if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?" is posed in Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas

Little Princes by Conor Grennan

Generous Justice by Tim Keller

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (yes, I do like the hipster "Dave" writers [Sedaris, Shields, Eggers]. So sue me)

And finally, some chick lit. I might find time to squeeze this little slice of frivolity in. Always the Baker Never the Bride by Sandra Bricker.


What's on your reading list right now?