Not a lot about me

As you will see if you look around, I'm not revealing a whole lot about myself here. Obviously, I'm using "you" in that sentence mostly to refer to future readers who will avidly read through my archives (I say with naive optimism), since I have no readers now. Even so, even without readers, I'm uncertain about giving out details about myself. (So why am I writing a blog, you might ask. Good question.) Here are a few facts: I'm an academic. I work as a college instructor and an academic administrator. I just earned an advanced grad degree.

I'm not interested in having an academic blog, however, although I read some of them and like reading them. What got me interested in blogging were those litblogs written by non-academics, like So Many Books and Book World, which are so enthusiastic about books it's infectious. Reading academic blogs feels just a little bit masochistic. I spend plenty of time thinking about academic issues as it is (and often that time is plenty painful). Of course, the categories aren't clear -- a blog doesn't have to be clearly "academic" or a "book blog," it can be both. And I'm sure I'll write about my students occasionally or other academic matters. But I want to bring some of the pleasure and excitement about books I see in many of the book blogs into my own writing. I'm not an amateur (I labeled myself an academic over at Metaxu Cafe), but can I pretend?