Reading for comps is a long, lonely, and all consuming year of Ph.D. life; and I am about to begin month 1. Three lists and about 180 books or equivalent articles to go before jumping through the first flaming hoop. My three lists are environmental history, post-confederation Canadian history, and the cordillera. The first is the broad explanation of my area of interest, the second is because the particular environment I study is in Canada, and the third is to satisfy the orographical nature of my dissertation. You see, I study coal mining communities in the front ranges of the Rocky Mountains. By geological happenstance the section of the cordillera with the majority of the coal is located in the Rockies which line the Alberta/British Columbia border. I am lucky enough to call one of these communities my hometown, though you would be hard pressed to associate it with coal mining today.