2018 Academic Reading Challenge

With 2018 just a month away, it's time to start planning for next year's academic reading challenge 

 This year, I've created more social media spaces for the reading challenge. 

You can 
follow the challenge on twitter @ReadingAcademic 
use hashtag #AcademicReadingChallenge2018 
or like us on facebook at: : https://www.facebook.com/AcademicReadingChallenge/
  There's also a group you can join if you are participating in the challenge, and there's a link to it on the public FB page for the group.

What it is and who it is for: 

This is a year long reading challenge with an emphasis on reading across disciplines. It serves a few different purposes depending on where you are in relation to formal university life. If you are a professional academic or public intellectual outside the university, this challenge is meant to give you a structure for reading outside your area of specialization - including reading literature - and to provide a space to talk with others about the experience. If you are a general reader who likes reading serious works of non-fiction, this challenge is also for you. It's a structure that you can use to read works of the type that you might not have encountered since you were a student. This is the fourth year I've organized this challenge. The categories are crowd-sourced by a small group of friends each year on Facebook. 

  New this year:  Under the extra-credit section, you can now "rig the category" and read someone else's "rigged" category.  For task 16, you can retroactively create a category based on a book you just want to read anyway; and for 17, the task is to find another book in the rigged category for someone else's 16.  So, while in general, as a prof. I don't advise doing extra credit first, this time, it might be good to post your rigged category sooner rather than later - either here or 

Rules and Rationale:

This is a challenge for academics who feel that their reading has become over-specialized and possibly joyless, who want to read more literature for pleasure, who want to broaden the way they approach their own research and teaching, who like to talk about reading with each other, who are interested in interdisciplinary reading, and who want to support their friends and colleagues by reading their books. You don’t have to be a professor to do the challenge. Maybe you graduated from school but you miss reading academic books. 

The challenge starts on January 1^, 2018 at midnight and goes till Dec. 31, 2018. There are a total of 15 regular categories in the challenge with three “extra credit” categories for over-achievers.  There are also double-points available in a few categories.

Rules and guidelines:

The academic books must be at least 175 pages long

Novels must be at least 200 pages long

Books of poetry or special issues of journals must be at least 100 pp. long

One book can be a children's or YA book.

To decide whether a book is academic, look for something published by a university press.

Any book on the list, except where specified otherwise, can be a novel or a complete journal issue as long as it fits the general category

Books can only count for one category, but you can switch them from one category to the other before you’re done if you like.  (In other words, you can't count a book by your friend who wrote about fascism for both the fascism and "by a friend" categories.)

Only one book can be something you’ve read before

Audiobooks are fine as long as they are unabridged and the print edition is at least 200 pages long.

Books must be started no earlier than midnight 1/1/18 and finished no later midnight 12/31/2018.

Points: This isn't a competition, but if you're counting…

Total possible points for 1-15 without "double-point bonuses" - 200. 

If you do all the double-point bonuses and do extra-credit categories, you can get a maximum of 260 points.

Categories for 2018

1. A book by a friend or colleague 10 points

2.  book on any colonizing society by a person from the place colonized by that society 10

3. A book about fascism or other political subject that you don’t like, but should read about for your own good 10 points

4. A book of economic history or theory 20 points

5.  A book with a number in the title (not a volume number) 10 points

6. A work of formally innovative literary fiction, such as experimental or avant-garde fiction 20 points (double points if published outside the US or UK)

7.   A literary biography or work of literary criticism 20 points

8. A book by the author whose biography you read, or a work of literature discussed in the book of literary criticism 20 points

9.  Academic or journalistic book on the same subject as a documentary film 10 points

10.  a book on whichever of these categories you don't usually read about in the US: race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, disability/ability 10 points

11. An academic book about any location in Asia or Africa (if you are in African or Asian Studies, read about a place or time that you don't normally read about, or read about the other continent) 10 points (Double points if about a topic about which you teach or do research)

12. Academic book published the year you were born 20 points

13.  A book about the place where you are at the moment you are reading it. Can be fiction, poetry or any academic discipline, including sciences.  (size of place should be city, town, region or state) 10 points

14.  A book about a climate change, or about environmentalist politics 10 points

15.  A 2017 winner of an academic book award, or any non-fiction book on a "best-of" list 10 points

EXTRA CREDIT:

16.  Extra Credit: Rig the Category: Read a book you'd read anyway, then make up (and share) the category to justify it  10 points

17. Extra, Extra Credit:  Read a book in the category of someone else's "rig the category" post 10 points

18. Super Duper Extra Credit: genre fiction or graphic novel related to your current academic project 10