One of my past NLNRU students (but not one of my thesis advisees) has a book coming out soon. It’s getting a decent amount of attention so far, but I have a very mixed reaction to it. I think it’s going to do well for what I regard as the wrong reasons, and while I realize that makes me sound like I need to take the stick out, I think if you’re going to be totally uptight and defensive about something, it might as well be something about which you care a lot. As the blog title says, literature should mean something in your life. I wish this book were a contribution to literature. It’s not.
Something about which I don’t care that much, really, is the decision of the style guide of the publications of the University of Oxford to abandon the Oxford comma. Makes a catchy headline, though.
I got a lot done today: writing, the last part of that BAC project, manuscript submission, many emails. I also sprawled around and read for a while, in bliss. This evening and tomorrow, however, I have a 300-page manuscript to read for someone who is my thesis advisee. I think this one will get published, too, and I will be happy about that. First, though, I have to read it. I’ve read the first 225 pages in installments, but now that the manuscript is complete, I think I really need to start again from the beginning. (It’s not literally in a box. It’s clipped with the three largest binder clips I could find. I didn’t have any rubber bands.)
