New book arrivals - ready for the new term?

The first major new book arrivals of 2010 - several works by Anthony Grafton; Defenders of the Text, Commerce with the Classics and Worlds made by Words. I have read a number of articles by Grafton over the last 12 months and am hugely impressed with the level of scholarship in these. First read of bits of these books suggests that these are also very high-end works. Indeed the first full chapter I read - Humanism and Science in Rudolphine Prague: Kepler in Context - was actually quite an intimidating piece, the product of a huge amount of reading in some pretty obscure places. Would that I was able to produce something similar.

So I am just about ready for the start of the new term. I have been thinking about what my goals are for this term. Obviously I will be attending a good number of John Milton's History of Science seminars, though there are quite a few this term that I saw last year and don't want to repeat. I have no plans to do any Philosophy of Economics in the short term, but might attend a couple of the dissertation seminars at some point. My work focus is based more on my planned PhD than the LSE MSc. Indeed, if I am accepted onto a PhD programme, there is little point in doing much irrelevant work for the MSc. So I have a plan to spend one intensive week doing P of E close to the exam and that will be all. H of S will be fine and it is worthwhile doing something serious for the dissertation. But perhaps not right at the moment.

This year could turn into a really good one for study - or it might all rather peter out. But I am enjoying the intellectual work I am doing more than any other work I have done in my life - so long may it continue!