Somehow – I’m not sure how, really – I seem to be over six months through the first year of my MA. Which equates to being nearly done with this half: I’ve got about two months left of classes and reading, and one essay to write.

And I haven’t been writing about books nearly as much as I had hoped I’d be doing when I first started my Library Quest back in September. Nor, it must be admitted, have I been reading as much as I’d hoped to, outside of my course texts. In fairness, though, the texts recently have been weighty tomes: Milton’s Paradise Lost and Wordsworth’s Preludes, among others.

The next round certainly feel much less weighty, beginning with a collection of short stories.

Which leads me to hope that I might be able to read other things too. I rewarded myself for handing in my last essay with Skandar and the Phantom Rider, the second in the bloodthirsty unicorn series.

It didn’t disappoint, and I look forward to the third, Skandar and the Chaos Trials. But, being now an adult, I don’t often feel that I absolutely must get books on publication day, not if it’s hardback, anyway. I can usually wait until the paperback is released. For those I must have, immediately, I get as an eBook. And then wait for a paperback in a charity shop to turn up.

But in the meantime, I’m enjoying the short stories of Anita Desai and looking forward to Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire. I’m ambivalent about John Clare’s poetry (a bit poem-ed out after Milton and Wordsworth), and merely curious about the last, of which I can never remember either the title or the author. Something to do with Homes or Houses.

The joy with studying this week, though, was the Day School at the OU’s Milton Keynes campus, which made me feel like I am actually a student. Travelling to and from was less of a joy, but a day of in-person lectures, putting faces to erstwhile names on a screen, even the recruitment-to-PhD talk by almost-done PhD students, was fun and interesting. Now if only I could think of what I’d like to research for the dissertation next year!