Bookstack of DOOM!

So, I am back in the swing of things! And by that, I mean I have an outrageous amount of work to do.

Observe:

This is my Stack of Doom (actually larger than shown, because of all the bought books on my other shelf) which should keep me occupied for the next week or so. To be fair, I think I've read six of them already. So it will probably be fine. I just need them for quotes and such. In any case, my two final essays are due a week from now, and the topics pretty cool, I think--one on the imagined Orient in DeQuincey and Coleridge, the other on strategies of detection and mapping, using H.G. Wells to critique Conan Doyle. Fun times!

I am, by the way, a huge fan of the black book in the middle: Out of Place by Ian Baucom. I'm finding I have very consistent taste in scholars--I like them eloquent, and all over the place in terms of source material. In this one, Baucom looks at cricket fields, Gothic architecture, linguistics, and a ton more in his effort of find places that define the diversity and hybridity of what Englishness has become because of its, and the world's, imperial history. I'm not very good at postcolonial theory, but it was an excellent read, made particularly fascinating by its multidisciplinarity.

In other news, I have submitted abstracts now for both my conferences, so that each is going to focus on a different section of my dissertation. So hopefully this will motivate me to get lots and lots done in the next few weeks (the conferences are on the 8th and 10th of June), so that I'll then be well set up to finish the rest by August and then rework and edit and nitpick to death until September. At least, that's the plan. We'll see how it goes. If I can actually make it work, then my god, I may have beaten my procrastination habit! If only temporarily.

Okay, having read the entirety of Carlyle's Past and Present this morning, I think I need a nap.

Edit: Also, I feel that I should note that it is now a quarter to nine o'clock at night, and the sun is only just beginning to set. Long summer days indeed! I could get used to this.