Brief Kalamazoo 2012 Thoughts

I don’t have a lot of gas left in the tank but I suppose I have enough for a few brief thoughts.

First, going back to my book-buying plan – SUCCESS!!! I bought 39 books this year. For me, this is sanity. And of those, 21 had been on my wishlist and most of the others were fairly inexpensive. I mean, $5 Penguins? Not gonna pass that up. I also now own a book from Brill so that’s another milestone reached. Their display copies were 50% off. I just wish they’d brought their Transformations of Late Antiquity (or whatever that’s precisely called) collection. Of course then my total wouldn’t have been in the 30’s. I’m not gonna bother with a picture since it doesn’t come close to last year’s. I also only bought one Carolingian book so I was mostly successful there, but there was a copy of Dumbarton Oaks Charlemagne’s Survey of the Holy Land by Michael McCormick, trans & ed., which was priced to where I decided not to pass it up.

Of course such discipline on my part deserves a reward doesn’t it? So I just ordered the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series 2 14-volume set. No, this was NOT a Kalamazoo purchase so my total of books bought is NOT actually 53. No, really. 1

Note to self: Buy new bookcase.

I had a much better time at Kalamazoo this year than last. Unlike last year I was able to be a social person, chat with folks, grab some drinks occasionally and even eat pizza with grad students. Being a recluse may have been fine for some fifth century folks in the desert but it’s not for me. But I still didn’t go to the dance.

I went to some really good sessions this year. I have a list of sources to look through(or for) to check some things out that people were talking about. I’ll fill everyone in when I do my reports. I’m not positive how I’ll do those. At the moment, I think I’m going to mostly do the daily reports but there were some really good sessions which I may feature in standalone posts, so it’ll be somewhere between what I did last year and for 2010.

Appreciated seeing everyone this year, even those I only saw once or twice. Every year there are people I seem to run into all the time, seemingly at random. This year the two were Larry Swain (though we didn’t get to spend much time together, we just kept walking past each other) and Cullen Chandler, with an option on Steve Muhlberger. Then there are folks I was told were there who I never saw. And then there’s Michelle Ziegler who I saw at three sessions I was in and the most we communicated was with a wave – Michelle, I promise I wasn’t ignoring you.

More on Kalamazoo to follow – likely more than anyone wants to read. Right now I have books to shelve.

1 If you want to see what I picked up, go to my Library Thing Page and select the tag, ICMS 2012.