Thursday, December 6, 2018

the Fifth Annual Academic Reading Challenge Starts Jan 1, 2019


Welcome reading friends!

Read below to find out the categories for next year's challenge. 


What it is and who it is for: 
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 runs for a year and emphasizes reading across academic disciplines. 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 fifth year I've organized this challenge, and you can read about it in an essay I wrote “Read Another Book, Repeat When Necessary” that’s included in the new essay collection, Reversing the Cult of Speed in Higher Education  edited by Jonathan Lee Chambers and Stephanie Gearhart. The challenge categories are crowd-sourced by the challenge participants in November of the year before the challenge starts.  
 
You can 


Like us on facebook
  There's also a facebook group you can join by permission.
follow the challenge on twitter
use hashtag #AcademicReadingChallenge to share your own updates on the challenge




Rules
The challenge starts on January 1, 2019 at midnight and goes till Dec. 31, 2019. 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.

 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 1/1/19 and finished no later midnight 12/31/2019
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 240 points.



And NOW….the Categories

1) Book by a friend or colleague 10 points
2) Book about music 10 points
3) Book about fascism  10  points
4) Book written before 1900 20  points
5) Book about a commodity 10 points
6) Book by a living poet 20 points
7) Historical novel 10 points
8)  Book of critical university studies 20 points
9)  Book about a country you don't normally read about 10 points
10) Book originally written in a non-European language 20 points
11) Book you first heard about on a podcast, radio, or social media 10 points
12) Book about a profession you'll never have, but always wish you did  20 points
13) Book that won an award in your field (any time period) 10 points
14) Book you'd forgotten you own (double points if you bought it twice) 10 points
15) A book about aging or with a protagonist over 60 10 points

Extra Credit:
16)  Extra Credit: The Struggle Continues! (you define the struggle) 10 points
17) Extra Extra credit: Book related to your teaching or research but a different discipline from yours 10 points
18) Super Duper Extra Credit: A book you discovered in the footnotes of another book 10 points

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