I have a lot of books gathering dust on my “to read” shelf. In the past couple of years I’ve lapsed into a bad habit of half-reading books, and then abandoning them when my time is curtailed by projects. Now that the immediate pressure is off from college, I’m attempting to mop up some of these languishing novels, and get back into a regular reading habit. Recently my fare has been dry textbooks and academic articles. It’s a joy to immerse myself in fiction again. I’ve just finished reading Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, which I enjoyed (as you can tell from the review). I did have a couple of…