It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything from my personal reading list. So long, in fact, that I have suddenly found myself without one. In all honesty, I have never been the kind of person with a reading list, per say. Not so deep down, I balk at the prospect of a reading list; it evokes the regimentation and planning that I read to avoid, that I have in abundance in my other pastimes. Read: I may or may not over-organize.

Nevertheless, four years ago, I signed up for an English Major in an Arts Degree and was presented with reading lists to my heart’s delight. This can be taken as fact, because every time I told someone—a friend or a stranger or someone at a job interview—that I’d embarked on a degree in English and History, they had nothing to say except ‘Wow, that must be a lot of reading’ or some variation thereof. Actually, I had the exchange down to a commendable consistency.