Since graduating, I've rediscovered my appetite for literary fiction, and most especially for non-fiction. It's not that I didn't read these things when I was in school--just that the texts were mostly chosen for me, and when I was done reading those, the last thing I wanted to do with my free time was more heavy reading.

Last week I read Sun Tzu's The Art of War (that was research, technically), which was much shorter than I expected it to be. Turns out all those big thick books are 75% commentary. I read the entirety of the text in a couple of hours, including all my note taking.

I had a residual buildup of books of essays on my shelf, so last week I also finished An Anthropologist on Mars, which was interesting at least, and Touch Magic, a collection of essays on writing by Jane Yolen. This week I'm working through a Best American Spiritual Writing Series book from 2006--a leftover textbook of Drew's that's actually pretty thought provoking. After that, I'm sadly out of non-fiction on my to-be-read shelf, which means I'll either have to go back to fiction (and the sad pile of high fantasy that's been amassing since I got sick of it last year) or raid the stash of literary criticism and political theory on our other bookshelves.

And after that I suppose there's the library, and my years-long list of things-I'd-like-to-read-but-do-not-own. I'm trying not to bring in other books when I still have 23 on my to-be-read shelf, and I'd like to either get through them or get rid of them.

At least I'm following the advice the Dean of Humanities gave us at my undergraduate convocation. If I could leave you with one piece of advice, he said, it would be that you keep reading.