I didn't read as much as I had hoped to during the bout of books week, considering that this time of year is generally a good one for me to be reading. I think the main problem was that I started with Isaac-Dovere's Battle for the Soul, which I made some headway in, though I'm beginning to find it to be a a slog.
However, I did finish Michael Gould Wartofksy's The Occupiers, which I was reading to prepare for my fall seminar, and found it quite a quick and informative study. I'm looking forward to teaching it. I also finished the audiobook of Ian Rankin's Strip Jack, which I had almost finished, but then forgot about for a while - not the best Rankin mystery. I also started reading John Scalzi's Starter Villain, which is quite entertaining. Not only is it nominated for the best novel Hugo (though I doubt I'll be voting for it), but the artist who did the cover, Tristan Ellwell is also nominated for best professional artist.
I read a little bit in the morning, but spent most of Monday at a work mini-conference and then had a post-work plan with a friend, so I didn't get much reading done on the first day of this readathon.
On Tuesday, I read about 40 pages of Edward-Isaac Dovere's Battle for the Soul and 75 pages of Michael Gould-Wartofksy's The Occupiers, which is my 'read-for-work' book of the moment. This was my best day so far.
On Wednesday, I had hopes to match Tuesday, but I was distracted and didn't read that much, though I did pick up three books at the public library (two holds that came in: Volker Ulrich,Germany 1923, Calla Henkel, Other People's Clothes and impulse shelf pick of John Safran, God'll Cut You Down) as well as several comics at the comics shop in the evening, including the first two issues of Matt Kindt's new series If You Find This I'm Already Dead which had been accumulating in the "large issues" box along with Jeff Lemire's new run of Swamp Thing.
Today's music, in honor of reading about Occupy Wall Street is Lupe Fiasco's anthem, with video brought to you by "Shit Scott Walker is Doing to My State" (what that SSWIDTMS stamped on the video means).
I forgot to do the last couple of photo challenges, so I'll have to start doing those again. I guess I still have 4 potential good reading days before this week is over. Onward!
I was kind of surprised that category 14, Book about an election or elections in general got chosen by the group since this kind of focus in politics can become tedious. However, it is an election year, and we're surrounded by election talk. It seems reasonable to read something about an election, including things that could help put current politics in context.
This entry's theme song is Black Sheep's "The Choice is Yours" with the chorus that Billboard tells me sums up every election "you can get with this or you can get with that."
The one that I've chosen to read myself, and which I'm currently about 1/4 of the way through is Edward-Isaac Dovere's book Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump. This is the sort of book that probably turns a lot of people off from reading books about elections. It's a very standard political journalist's take, not an academic analysis, and certainly not a book with a point of view from the left. However, if you want to read an account that includes a lot of detailed "political insider" stuff about the internal politics of various campaigns building up to 2020, this isn't a bad read. I don't agree with a lot of Dovere's judgments of particular policies or politicians, but it's useful to know what those judgments are as I believe they are shared by a lot of people with political power. This is very much an example of American political "common sense," which can make it unintentionally infuriating. Other books about the 2020 election that are worth reading include Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague's The Steal which describes Trump's efforts to undo the results. I read this back when it first came out, and it was very similar to what you might have learned if you watched the January 6th hearings. Another choice might be the Congress's January 6th Report - though consider which edition to get. I got the one with Ari Melber's introduction on the recommendation of my local bookseller.
A search for books about the 2016 election led me immediately to the role of Russian propaganda in that election. Probably the most authoritative academic study of that attempt is political scientist, Kathleen Hall-Jamieson's book Cyberwar which came out in the fall of 2018. After finding that, I went searching for books about "election meddling" that would cover the US's interference in other countries' elections, and came across this 2021 study Meddling in the Ballot Box by International Relations professor, Dov Levin, which compares Russian and US electoral interference efforts from 1946 to 2000. Another interesting book that addresses recent elections outside the United States is Leslie C. Gates's Capitalist Outsiders about the influence of oil on the politics of Mexico and Venezuela. Another book that begins with a recent election in Latin America is Sebastian Edwards' The Chile Project which includes substantial discussion of the role of the US in undermining democracy in Chile, but also tells the story of the election of Gabriel Boric in 2021. Rather than being a story of the rise of neoliberalism, it's about neoliberalism's fall. Another book about elections and electoral activity outside the U.S., but involving U.S. influence is Amy Wilentz's The Rainy Season: Haiti Then and Now which updates the author's classic account of the immediate aftermath of the fall of "Baby Doc" Duvalier in Haiti and goes into the 2000s.
For books about the mixing of elections and criminal conspiracies, why not read about Richard Nixon's rise and fall in the U.S? There are many books to choose from. There's Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in '72 based on his reports for Rolling Stone. I read this book years ago in the summer between my senior year in high school and first year in college, and remember finding it both prescient and hilarious. Or, you could read the classic Joe McGinnis book, The Selling of the President 1968 which features Roger Ailes, who sadly continued to influence American politics for years to come. A relatively recent book on the 1968 election is Aram Goudsouzian's The Men and the Moment, which is also about Nixon's opponents. And of course, you could go for any book on Watergate. There are so many to choose from, starting with the original All the President's Men that made so many people want to be investigative reporters, to the more recent book by Garrett Graff, Watergate: A New History.
If you're more interested in the slightly more recent past, you might want to check out Robert Fleegler's Brutal Campaign about the Bush vs. Dukakis contest in 1988. This was the same period when David Duke ran for the Louisiana state legislature, sparking an early anti-fascist campaign to stop him. Tyler Bridges' book The Rise and Fall of David Duke could be a great choice for this category. Or, if you're interested in a more academic account, you might take a look at the edited collection from U. of Vanderbilt Press, David Duke and the Politics of Race in the South.
If you're interested in going even further back in US electoral history to get at the roots of this situation, a friend and mentor of mine recommends Morgan Kousser's The Shaping of Southern Politics, originally published in 1974 as "the best of the older histories" about the establishment of the Democratic Party's one-party white-supremacist rule of the US South in the late nineteenth century.
If you want to read about elections in Europe, you could go with a real classic, Karl Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte which is about a coup, but also includes a lot of discussion of elections that preceded it. This is really an indispensible book for anyone interested in political analysis in my view. Another book that concerns a set of specific elections that ends with the end of elections is Benjamin Carter Hett's book about the immediate rise of Hitler, The Death of Democracy which gets into the details of the German parliament during the Weimar period, and also was written in such a way as to highlight parallels with the Trump era. I am not sure how much this book on Silvio Berlusconi focuses on the ins and outs of specific elections, but it looks like it has at least some discussion of the media and "the democratic process" and might be worth a look. For another account of contemporary far-right authoritarianism, Paul Lendvai's book on Viktor Orban, Orban: Hungary's Strongman includes a significant amount of discussion of his path to electoral victory.
Another book about the election of a major far-right leader outside the US, is the popular book on Modi's election in 2014 by journalist, Rajdeep Sardesai, 2014: The Election that Changed India. I haven't read this book, but the Goodreads reviews from BJP supporters are very negative, which suggests it's a critical analysis of Hindu nationalism.
A friend who's participating in the reading challenge reminded me that there are also novels about elections.
One of those is Edwin O'Connor's The Last Hurrah, a classic work about a mayoral race in Boston that was adapted into a movie starring Spencer Tracey. It's now out in a new edition from the University of Chicago Press.
But if a mayoral race is too serious for you, you could try Tom Perotta's popular novel about a high school class-president race, Election, which was also adapted into a (very funny) movie.
Philip Roth's The Plot Against America got a second lease on life because of Trump, and also a TV series adaptation. It's one of his better novels, in my view, though I found the ending a bit strange.
The May Bout of Books is the one that gives me the best chance to actually do some substantial reading. My grades are turned in, the big indie-rock festival I go to every spring is over. The only thing stopping me this week is one all-day mini-conference thing at work on Monday. After that, I should be unscheduled and ready to read.
What is Bout of Books?
According to the hosts,
The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 13th and runs through Sunday, May 19th in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are reading sprints, daily Discord questions, and exclusive Instagram challenges, but they’re all completely optional. For all Bout of Books 40 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team
I noticed that they've moved the scheduled chats from the sewer that is Twitter/X to Discord which is nice, though I rarely remember to participate in the chats.
I've been trying to figure out what I really want to focus on reading this month for my research. I've been working on two different books over the last few years, and summer is the only time I really have to do research. One of these books is about "geek culture" and political conflict in science-fiction and fantasy, which I've been calling "Geek Wars" as a working title. The other one is about anti-fascist politics in the U.S. But I have a couple of other pressing work-related things to do that involve reading. I'm teaching a brand new graduate course in the fall, and need to prepare for that. I've also got a book review to write this summer - and both the book review and the new graduate course are related to the project on anti-fascism.
I always try to do at least some "non-work" reading as well, and those books continue to be tempting.
So far, I'm thinking I'll continue reading Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump, which was my choice for the academic reading challenge category 14: "book about an election or elections in general." It's not the best book about an election, but it's a detailed account of the backroom politics of a lot of capmaigns and Democratic strategizing over the last 8 years or so, so is worth reading.
If I have time, I'm going to go back to Jo Walton's Informal History of the Hugos, which has the benefit of being both fun and related to the "geek wars" project. A less fun book that I started reading for "Geek Wars" before I was forced to focus all my energy on teaching last spring is the Routledge Companion to Science Fiction by Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint (the edition I have doesn't include Adam Roberts).
I have already given up on this week's book-club selection, 2312 which I'm having trouble getting into, and which is just too long to finish in a couple of days, even if I was really loving it.
I guess we'll see what happens. Hopefully I'll be able to settle down and focus on reading something, as I've been very distracted for the last week.
I've been super busy with work this spring, so I haven't had an opportunity to post for a while, but I'm finally getting around to this one. I just finished reading my own choice for this category, which was Russel Banks' novel The Darling about a white woman from the Weather Underground who winds up in Liberia, married to a government minister, and then involved in the civil war between Charles Taylor, Prince Johnson and Samuel Doe. The reason for this category's entry into into the challenge was that one of my friends really wanted to read another book by Banks, and thus "rigged" the cateogory. Thankfully, others were interested in reading books by the recently departed. This category may seem a little maudlin or macabre, but it's true that writers who we may not have paid attention to in life get more attention when they die because of the obituaries that come out.
Sadly there are many eligible people for this category. Since this category is "recently-ish" I've decided that means within the last five years. I decided to only include authors whose work I've read myself and remember well enough to really talk about, though of course there have been some recent major literary deaths that I haven't included below.
Since several of the authors I chose were fierce critics of the US government, but also knew, "it's not just American where shit's fucked up." today's musical accompaniment comes from the late Jaimie Branch, a fantastic jazz musician who died in 2022, playing "Prayer for AmeriKKKa pt 1 and 2"
Here are my suggestions:
1. Russell Banks Since I've already mentioned him, here's why you should read a book by him. Banks is a meticulous writer who creates wonderfully believable characters. For example, in the Darling, his point-of-view character is Hannah Musgrave, a white woman activist from the 60s, told in flashback from the early 1990s. It never felt "off" to me at all. He also takes on serious political issues without being didactic. I say he's meticulous because so many of his novels are also about distinct historical periods - such as his book Cloudsplitter, about John Brown, which is probably the best work of fiction about John Brown and abolition in general.
2. Toni Morrison This is my second recommendation for her for one of the reading challenge categories. She counts for this category because she died in 2019, within the last five years.
3.I've also previously recommended Mike Davis for this reading challenge. He was a prolific writer, and while my first recommendation was in the books about cities category, he also wrote books about other subjects that are very much worth reading, such as his classic book on the American working class, Prisoners of the American Dream
4. The great British novelist, A.S. Byatt died last year. Her book Possession is one of my all-time favorite books. I re-read a few years ago for one of these reading challenges, and it was still just as fun as the first time. She's also the author of many other books that are probably also excellent.
5. Another great British novelist, and the winner of two Booker prizes, Hilary Mantel, who suffered from illness for most of her life, died in 2022. As the linked obituary reads, she is most well-known for her amazing historical novels about Thomas Cromwell, starting with Wolf Hall. I also loved her novelBeyond Blacksort of like magical realism in British suburbia.
6. If you're looking for an excellent academic book to read by a recently deceased scholar of American empire, Amy Kaplan would be a wonderful author to read at this particular moment because of the way she brought together literary and cultural criticism and analysis of US foreign policy. Her 2018 book Our American Israel, would be an especially good choice this year.
7. Another great anti-imperialist writer was Sven Lindquist, who died in 2019. His short book Exterminate All the Brutes is one that most of my friends read when it first came out in translation. In it, he writes “We want genocide to have begun and ended with nazism....That is what is most comforting.”
8. If you'd rather read something lighter, try something by Barbara Neely, the author of the wonderful mystery series featuring Blanche White. This article from Lit Hub's "Crime Reads" newsletter explains her activist history and influence on a younger generation of Black women mystery writers.
9. If you want a mix of foreign policy commentary with genre fiction, you cannot do better than John Le Carre, who, like Neely, died in 2020. He certainly wrote plenty of books to choose from.
10. The last author whose work I've read and who I highly recommend in this category is the most recently deceased, Maryse Conde who died just last month. Her book I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, is one that I taught when I was still teaching literature classes. You can read Lit Hub's profile of her at the link above.
11. Speaking of Lit Hub, I suggest reviewing their annual summaries of notable literary deaths I found out more about recently-deceased Syrian author, Khaled Khalifa by reviewing those lists this morning.
