2024: The Tenth Anniversary of the Academic Reading Challenge - Categories Below!

Hello my reading friends, 

It's a new year, which means it's time to share the categories for the 2024 academic reading challenge. Since I organized the first challenge for a few friends in 2014, this is officially the 10th year that we've been doing this. I'm going to try to be a little more active in getting people engaged in the challenge this year and have done a few things differently to celebrate the anniversary. Mainly, I've added two "TBD" categories of extra-credit that people will have a chance to vote on in June. If you want to participate in decision making and interact with others about the challenge, we have a Facebook group. If you're not on Facebook, but still want to participate, comment below and I'll get in touch with you. We have a spreadsheet too! 

Who and What the Academic Reading Challenge 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.

And now, here are this year's categories, with points in parentheses

1. A book by a friend, colleague, former teacher or former student (10)

 2. a book by a Palestinian author (10)

3. A book by an author you've seen cited or heard about a lot but never read (10)

4. a book about housing, homelessness, and/or the use of urban space (20)

5. a book written in the 1960s (10)

6. A book that you've owned for a long time but have never read (10)

7. A book about a rural location or rural life in general (in any country) (20)

8. A book by a winner of the Nobel Prize for literature (10)

9. A book that won an academic prize (20)

10. A book about conspiracy theories or "conspiracism" (10)

11. A book about mental health/illness (20)

12. A book of fiction in which a non-human animal is a major character, or in which non-human animals feature significantly in the plot (10)

13. A book published before 1900 (10)

14. A book about a specific election or elections in general (10)

15. A book about a place you've visited for no longer than a month (20)

Extra Credit:

16. Extra-Credit: A book about the effect of a disease outbreak or epidemic on religion (20)

17. Extra Extra-Credit: A book by a recently-ish deceased author (10)

18. Super-Duper Extra Credit: A special issue of an academic journal (20)

10^th anniversary bonus categories! TBA at the 6-month mark

19.

20. 

 The Rules 

The challenge starts on January 1, 2024 at midnight and goes till Dec. 31, 2024. 

There are a total of 15 regular categories in the challenge, and five “extra credit” categories for over-achievers. Two of these categories are currently TBD and will be decided by challenge-participants in June.   

 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, or check the acknowledgments for references to scholarly mentors and anonymous readers. 

 Any book on the list, except where specified otherwise, can be a novel, book of poetry, 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 cannot count a book by your friend who wrote a book about the 2016 election for both the "book about an election" and the "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 175 pages long. Books must be started no earlier than midnight 1/1/24 and finished no later midnight 12/31/2024

The Points: This isn't a competition, but some find this motivating, so if you're counting… 

Total possible points for 1-15 without any extra points: 200 

Total possible points for all extra-credit: 270 (after adding the last two categories in the summer)