Proof that you can simultaneously go to grad school and read for pleasure

So one of the ways my grad school angst manifested itself was a fear that I wouldn’t get to read a book for fun for the next two years. This wasn’t helped by just about everyone I know saying some variation on this theme. I heard, “Oh, I guess you won’t be going to the movies for two years;” and “So, we probably won’t be talking as much for a while now;” and “We should get together for drinks now before you disappear for two years.” It started to feel like I was sentencing myself to prison, and I had to tell everyone to put a lid on it (not in so many words).

The reality, of course, is that I do have less free time. That’s ok, even if it’s not really fun. Everything is a trade off, right? And I’m happy to say that when I finished Tom Robbins’ Villa Incognito last week, I proved to myself that it’s possible to scale back and not cut the things I love out of my life entirely while I’m in school.

This is the first Robbins book I’ve read. I inherited several of them from Rena when she did her big clean out ages ago and, with the 80-some-odd books in my to-be-read pile, it took this long for one of his to make it into my hands. I didn’t absolutely love the book, but there is no denying that Robbins has a formidable imagination. With his mixture of mythology, American history, personal relationships, religion, and drug trafficking, he creates something more unique than most authors will ever achieve. More than one person has mentioned Skinny Legs and All as a Robbins favorite, so I’ll have to dig through that big ol’ pile of mine and see if that’s one that Rena gave me.