Not Quite a Book

The doctoral studies rumble on: I'm getting to put down a fair number of words per day at the moment, which is quite gratifying, particularly since I have to meet my supervisor in ten days or so for a progress review. I think he was rather startled by my sudden interest in philosophy of language - the 'meaning' of meaning etc. - but was probably just happy that I'd actually got something down on paper, if not quite his area. I've put that topic on hold at the moment to tackle an examination of verb-forms in Paul's epistle to the Galatians, which is very much revisiting the territory of my MA. This time I'm looking at discourse prominence with reference to verbal aspect. One seminal, and not a little contraversial, book on the subject is Stanley E Porter's tome 'Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament', which, although thorough and impressively scholarly, is probably one of the most user-unfriendly books that I have come across: arbitrary changes in font-size (some disconcertingly small) and no subject index. The referencing isn't too hot either. There is an annoying tendency in academia to try and get away with stuff that wouldn't pass muster in, say, industry. And I'm not just talking about publications, either. The whole of academia seems chaotic, lacks planning, foresight, punctiliousness, punctuality, clarity, mired in a morass of information and words that lack cohesion, where arguments and hypotheses have to be teased from what seems to be unneccessary and willfully obscure prolixity. A clear, insightful mind and confident theory avoids obfuscation, surely: opaqueness cannot equal brilliance.

Another thing that is exercising my patience at the moment, is the sheer quantity of PDFs that are accumulating in boxes around my desk. I download a fair number per week, so I'm starting to wonder about the advantages of an iReader or the like. Would that work for PDFs? I must investigate....although I dislike reading text on screen (makes my eyes ache), the sheer mass of paper is becoming overwhelming, not to mention the expense of ink-cartridges (why so costly?) and paper. It's a tempting thought.....though Not Quite a Book.