signalnoise

So the weird thing about looking for a job is that it is not at *all* conducive to writing a dissertation. I actually think this is an endogenous problem: people tell you when you're on the market you don't get much writing done, so then - you feel like it's ok to slack a bit. But you really are busy: sending out applications, writing a job talk etc. And it just feels hard to concentrate or focus on a chapter, when you like *whole goddamn life* is on the line.

Mostly, I've been odds and endsing it: working on some graphs for other chapters, doing data work for a project me and E are working on, cleaning up another piece to send out, and so on.

[As a side note - Dear E: Cleaning data and getting results that match yours are much easier when you tell me the *entirety* of what you did to your data, not just half of the steps and badly at that. Kthnkbai.]

That said: I have found a lot of time to read shit!

I just finished Devil's Cape by Rob Rogers, which is about gangsters and superheroes in Louisiana. Which sounds weird I know. But it's really pretty good. It even has a cool structure, where the chapters build to a central crucial event (re: X years before the event), then the event happens in the middle of the book, and the remaining chapters built out from that event (re: Z hours after the event). That's neat.

And I'm in Halloween mode right now, so the next book is up Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill. I'm stoked. I haven't read a good, spooky horror novel in a while.

Anyone else reading anything good?