I just compiled my rather daunting (mainly becuase this is the stripped down to the bare neccessities version) reading list for next year…

If anyone has copies of anything on it that they feel like selling or donating or trading for warm fuzzy items in aid of my education i’ll be very grateful (or any other books you think i might be remotely interested in).

Daunting as it may be its also rather exciting - i love the fact that books are what im supposed to be doing, and increasingly its feeling right that books are what my life is about - yes i may sound pretentious, but thats as may be.

Oh and for those of you who dont know - I’m about to enter 3rd year of an ma in english lit at edinburgh university.

Most of these books, along with a few others i NEED (ali smiths the accidental topping the list) will be coming from Word Power, a wonderful independant, radical bookshop - the perfect (and perfectly named) antitode to waterstones and the incredibly anti- student student bookshop that is blackwells.

The shop - full of excitement over words - is on west nicholson street in edinburgh but they also do an online service from www.word-power.co.uk
and a very efficient ordering service that promises to provide you with any book in print, normally within a few days. Which as anyone who has ever had to order an out of stock book from blackwells will know is incredibly efficient.

I might not like the way this country operates, I might feel very small and insignificant most of the time but I have got some choices and deciding where my money goes is definitely one of them.

On the subject of books, I’m currently reading Ciaran Carson’s translation of Dante’s Inferno. Admittedly I knew nothing of the work when I began reading but I still have to recommend this translation. To put it simply the poem is alive, and a brilliant example of translation as an art form in its own right. It is also a fascinating read just for the recognition factor - sort of non-linear allusion - literary texts interact outside of the linear time of their writing, one of the ways that reading should never be seen as passive.

and now i think i need a new category to post this in