Have you ever considered consolidating your growing bibliography and posting it here somewhere? I’d be interested. You might even get some good recommendations. Seen this one? Sounded interesting.

I encountered Ways with Words several years ago in a poorly run methods seminar (not at my current institution), before I’d fully articulated to myself my interest in class, so a lot of it went right by me, and I’d have to re-read it to get anything out of it. But yeah, lots of smart people have lots of good things to say about her, and I probably ought to at least re-acquaint myself before I go on the market, if not for the dissertation.

And that’s the tough part. I mean, I haven’t even got a flippin prospectus yet, and I’m already happily piling stuff on the reading list like it’s a fire that’s gotta last me twenty winters. I find it so easy to tell myself I don’t yet know enough, and so hard to tell myself to stop reading and start writing. Every night. And maybe that’s what the Tutor means when he talks about the tentativity of my “academic” style.