While I worry about free reading, of course it is the most pleasurable. It reminds us of the reading we did when we are young, first let into the library. So many people love reading then. But ironically a lot of it dies from the strain of education.

I was smart enough (and had no choice anyway) to listen. I took a month or so off of reading and then went back with a vengeance, but freely. Here, there, wherever my heart and the things I read led me. Eventually I slipped a few of the directed things back in. But only a few.

It has now been about 14 months and I think I’m now ready to have a go at writing my thesis. And I am the better for it and for having read so many other things, including my 1st real interest in poetry.

My topic is a critique of the concepts of language and communication in LIS and having read poetry, literature, erotica, …, can only strengthen that critique.

As for the connections you may draw from your own disparate reading, relax and let them come to you. Some will be meaningful only for you and some will be more broadly applicable. Much of academic writing has been lessened by the project of specialization and narrowness. The world is a connected web of relationships between things, people and ideas. They matter. The are meaningful.

I have admired your (infrequent) writing for a while now. You are quite intelligent and I have no doubt you will find your way. As to much of your critique above I fully concur.

I sincerely wish you the best in finding your way.