Wyverary A- Z

How much reading can a graduate student get done on top of the reading she has to do for school?

I guess time will tell but my first bookshelf is all of the reading I hope to get done this semester ( today through December) in addition to all the deeply fascinating articles and scholarly books I'll be reading for classes (can you sense the sarcasm?). I know it's a lot of books, and I probably won't get through them all, but I did bring quite a few of them with me to school...just in case.

So far, I've started reading Packing for Mars and it's fascinating, funny, endlessly entertaining and would be impossible to put down, if circumstances were different. I can't say the same for the other two books I started reading, not that they're bad, just that the writing style is slow, leisurely, the attention to detail is exquisite and quite appropriate, seeing as both of them are classics and were written quite a while ago. Great Expectations  and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn are both classics, and I greatly enjoyed what I finished on my first attempt, and so I brought them along with me, to see if I could give each a try again.

I also bought a short story collection and a collection of essays- Dear Life and Slouching Towards Bethlehem. My thought here is that if I finish all my work reading early for a week, I could treat myself with a story or essay....only a bookworm would consider extra reading a "treat", am I right?

Finally, the last four books are a mixed bag. Two I bought because they both have movies coming out soon that look interesting, and I've heard nothing but good things about either: Half of a Yellow Sun and The Book Thief. The final two are new releases by my favorite authors writing today that if I can find the time to make it to a library, and if the library has these books, and if I have the time to read them, I will definitely make the effort to do so: Lowland and Transatlantic.

I'll write recommendations for these if I finish them as often as I can, and if you've read any of these, please let me know if I should add some hours to the day to squeeze in reading them.