Winter reading
When I was in college, between the end of Christmas break and the first-semester exams was Reading Period, about 10 days where students were given a chance to prepare for their tests. These days, I still have a Reading Period of sorts, between Christmas and the resumption of my teaching at the University of Akron, when I just dive into books. The current stack is above. It's not that I cannot read the rest of the time; before tackling my post-holiday reading, I spent happy time with an advance copy of The Sopranos Sessions , a detailed examination of the landmark series by my friends Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, which is officially available in a week. I also read Thomas E. Ricks 's Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom, and dipped into the Library of America's collection of Carson McCullers' s Stories, Plays and Other Writings, which LOA had made available at a nice discount. For a school project, earlier in the fall, I had read Tara Westov