After our whirlwind vacation, David and I have been settling back into "real life", and everything seems to be starting up again this week. So much is going on in the next couple of months, but when you live life with two people balancing between three jobs, graduate school, one car, and two active social lives, it gets a little crazy!
I re-start graduate school tonight. I have two semesters and one major thesis left until I complete my Master of Arts degree in History, and that starts tonight. I'm nervous as hell (I haven't been in school since 2008), and things are going to get very busy for a while. My husband works between 61 and 64 hours a week between two jobs, I work 35 hours a week at my job and classes will take up another five hours a week (classroom time; I have no idea what homework/writing time will take up). We won't be seeing much of each other Wednesdays and Thursdays from now until May, but I keep telling myself that it will be worth it in the end.
I am wondering what this is going to do for my reading and knitting productivity. :( I'm taking three books out of the library today, and I was hoping to get through them quick enough, but considering the amount of books I had to purchase for my two classes (it was something like 12 books), I have a feeling that I'm going to be doing a lot more "work-reading" than "pleasure-reading." :(
Speaking of books...I realized after Christmas that I desperately need a new bookshelf. My current bookshelf is full to overflowing. My very generous family gifted me many books for Christmas -- some fiction, some history, some knitting technique books -- and I have no room for them.
Right now, I have two bookshelves. A big one for my fiction and nonfiction, and another little one for my knitting technique books. I have a $50 gift card that I got for my birthday in September from my parents, and right now I'm thinking the best use for it would be a new, big bookshelf, devoted either entirely to my fiction or my non-fiction history (I'm thinking the latter).
I often joke with my family and friends that the reason I have so many hardcopies of books (even though I have a Kindle) is that I'm "building a library" of my history books -- and it's true! I have a pretty good start to a vast collection. Every college teacher I've ever been fortunate to have has had a vast library of their own in their office -- I aspire to this one day. So far, my "history library" includes the following (and I might have missed one or two):
British History:
The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir
The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir
Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley by Alison Weir
The Children of Henry VIII by Alison Weir
Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England by Alison Weir (title used in England, where I purchased it)
Henry VIII: The King and His Court by Alison Weir
The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir
Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and His Scandalous Mistress by Alison Weir
Britain's Royal Families: A Complete Geneology by Alison Weir
Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser
Russian History:
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie
King, Kaiser, Tsar by Catrine Clay
U.S. History:
The Devil In Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry Into the Salem Witch Trials by Marion L. Starkey
Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson
Do you consider your book collection "your library" or "your legacy"?
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