I'm very behind on my 2025 reading, and not only for the reading challenge. At the moment, I'm trying to read every short book I can get my hands on, including Adania Shibli's powerful and disturbing Minor Detail
We're still finishing this year's challenge, but we are already looking toward next year. Fifteen challenge participants have nominated and voted on the categories for 2026, I think it will be a good year of reading.
I want to make a couple of notes about some specific categories and the challenge in general here, since some of them are a little less straightforward than categories we've had before. I also decided to add some internationalization and earlier periodization as options to some categories to raise the degree of difficulty for those interested. I added a 19th category this year for "dealer's choice: book relevant to the US govt's ongoing murdering of people in boats and saber-rattling vs. Venezuela.
I had put several categories related to the ongoing "boat strikes" (murders of people in boats) and threats towards Venezuela into the nominations this year, and none of them made it into the final 17 categories, though individuals ranked a variety of them very high, including in the top five. I've never pulled something that I simply thought was important that didn't make it into the final list before and put it into the challenge, but I felt it was necessary this year.
One goal behind this challenge is to read books that are relevant to current events. So in previous years, we've had categories to read books by writers who were punished for their support of Palestine and books about AI (2025), a book by a Palestinian author (2024); books by Middle Eastern and North African authors (2022, 2018) Books about quarantine or lockdown (2021) and books about critical university studies (2019). In multiple years we've read books about fascism, anti-fascism and resistance to authoritarianism, labor unions; medicine; climate change and/or the environment; immigrants and/or refugees, militarism, colonialism, and revolutionary and counter-revolutionary politics, and books by indigenous authors and queer authors.
We've never included a cateogry about Latin America and/or the Caribbean, though we have had many categories that could include that part of the world, such as books about colonialism, books by indigenous authors and refugees, and books about authoritarianism, or recently "books about borders and why they're bad." It seems like the time to be more intentional given what's happening in the Western hemisphere where most challenge participants live. This situation is likely to get worse over the coming year, and I think we should be educating ourselves about the broader context in whatever way makes sense to us. Books in this special category 19 could include books about Venezuela, books about the US in Latin America and/or the Caribbean more generally; books about drug wars, international law, war crimes, and general crimes by nation states.
The challenge has also long encouraged reading books originally published in languages other than English, books written before the 20th century, and books by non-Western authors, whether as categories on their own, or through adding extra points to a category by adding those characteristics. So, it's your choice to read any graphic novel or illustrated book, but to increase your points, you could read one that was originally published in a language other than English. I added similar extra-point options to the book of collected essays and book about a song or musical composition.
Another less straightforward category this year is "book about slavery or book that compares something to slavery."This began with a somewhat different phrasing as "slavery in any form (physical, economic, sexual, etc)." I talked to the person who nominated this category and we tried to come up with the best way to encourage people to read books about slavery as a somewhat broad cateogry without opening the door to books that used slavery as a way to describe something that just isn't slavery. It seemed to me in the end that including books that made comparisons to slavery without conflating other historical experiences with slavery would allow for books like Sarah Haley's No Mercy Here that consider the legacy or impact of slavery in later time periods, as well as books about slavery in any place or time (such as slavery in ancient Rome), but would not ecourage people to read books that make over-broad claims about some non-slavery experience actually being slavery.
As always, when it's not specified in the category, any book in the challenge can be an academic book or special issue of an academic journal, and any book could be a novel, play or book of poetry
To join the reading challenge, just read a book in each one of the categories below. It can be any book you want that fits the description. I'll be posting a report on what I read for 2025 at some point in January.
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 about an island (10)
3.A book that you last read as a student, or a book that had an influence on you in the past (10)
4. A book about decolonization (20)
5. A collection of essays by or about an individual writer. Double points if the author is not from the US or the UK (10/20)
6. A collection of letters or an epistolary novel (20)
7. An illustrated book (can be a graphic novel, memoir, or other graphic non-fiction book) Double points if the work was originally written in a language other than English (10/20)
8. A book about food seurity, food policy, or the political uses of food (anything from the history of food stamps to the use of hunger strikes) (20)
9. A book about slavery or a book that compares something to slavery (10)
10. A historical novel or play (10)
11. A book about a part of the body or with a part of the body in the title (10)
12. A book about the last place you visited (can be a book about household interiors or a local neighborhood) (20)
13. A book whose publication was controversial or banned (10)
14. A book by a first nations or indigenous author (20)
15. A book about a song or musical composition. Double points if the composition or song is from earlier than 1950 (10/20)
Extra Credit:
16. Extra Credit: An academic book that won a major prize (20)
17. Extra Extra Credit: A book about ghosts, poltergeists, seances, or something else supernatural. Double points for an academic book on this subject (10/20)
18. Super-Duper Extra Credit: A book about anarchism (10)
19. Dealer's Choice Extra Credit: book relevant to the US govt's ongoing murdering of people in boats and saber-rattling vs. Venezuela* (20)
The Rules
The challenge starts on January 1, 2026 at midnight and goes till Dec. 31, 2026.
There are a total of 15 regular categories in the challenge, and four “extra credit” categories for over-achievers.
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 for both 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 1/1/26 and finished no later midnight 12/31/2026
The Points: This isn't a competition, but some find this motivating, so if you're counting…
In case you're wondering what makes some books worth 20 and some books worth 10 points, it's all about how difficult it might be to find and/or read books in that category.
Total possible points for 1-15 without any extra points: 200
Total possible points w/4 extra-credit and bonus points for making categories harder: 300
This isn't an experience of synchronicity, but I couldn't help thinking of King Gizz's excellent "There is no Planet B" while finishing up the chapter "Dumpster Fire Space Utopia" in Adam Becker's also excellent More Everything Forever
In this chapter, he quotes Martin Rees who argues "it's a dangerous delusion to to think that space offers an escape from Earth's problems. We've got to solve these problems here. Coping with climate change may seem daunting, but it's a doddle compared to terraforming Mars."
I'm a little late posting this year, but we are still doing the Academic Reading Challenge and the 2025 categories are here. If you want to be in on the choosing or discuss what you read for those categories, 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 about resistance to dictatorships, authoritarian rule, etc (any discipline) (10)
3.A book about borders (and why they're bad) (20)
4. A memoir or novel by a refugee, child of refugees, immigrant or child of immigrants (in any country) (10)
5. A book about medical care, medicine or healthcare policy(20)
6. A book with a provocative title and/or cover, double points if you read it in public (10/20)
7. A book about Reconstruction (in the US after the Civil War) and its overthrow (20)
8.A biography of someone who isn’t famous (20)
9. A book about a specific region within any country (10)
10.A book by, or about a personal hero or heroes (double points if they fall outside of politics) (10/20)
11.A biography of an artist (broadly defined: visual artists; novelists; dancers; musicians) (10)
12. A book about where you live now, or the place you consider your hometown. (10)
13. A novel that deals centrally with the natural world(10)
14.A book by an author who was fired or suspended from their job, denied an award, or disinvited from an awards event, or otherwise de-platformed or dishonored due to their support for Palestine. (20)
15.A book about computers, AI or new media (YouTube, social media, etc) (10)
Extra Credit:
16. Extra-Credit: A book about a country that's no longer there (20)
17. Extra Extra-Credit: A book about crime (10)
18. Super-Duper Extra Credit: An academic book about games and/or gaming (either video or table-top) (20)
The Rules
The challenge starts on January 1, 2025 at midnight and goes till Dec. 31, 2025.
There are a total of 15 regular categories in the challenge, and three “extra credit” categories for over-achievers.
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 for both 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 1/1/25 and finished no later midnight 12/31/2025
The Points: This isn't a competition, but some find this motivating, so if you're counting…
In case you're wondering what makes some books worth 20 and some books worth 10 points, it's all about how difficult it might be to find books in that category.
Total possible points for 1-15 without any extra points: 200
Total possible points w/3 extra-credit: 250
Total possible points w/ extra credit and extra points for 1-15: 270
I had an OK year of reading this year, though I was pretty slow with some books - like Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus, which took me forever! I wound up reducing my original reading goal on Goodreads from 103 to 100 and only got to 100 by reading a number of big comic books (sometimes called graphic novels, though two of these were non-fiction so wouldn't fit that description).
I'll go ahead and link to my Goodreads Year in Books.
It shows the results of my preliminary research on my "geek wars" book project - reading some classics in the field of fan studies, like Matt Hill's game-changing Fan Cultures which is one that I see cited in a lot of contemporary books, such as Benjamin Woo's Getting a Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture, which was a great place to start on a review of the recent scholarly literature.I also read Quinn Slobodian's excellent and very readable Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy as research on the right-wing of geekdom. Partly because I was prioritizing that project this year, I also decided to read as many of the Hugo finalists as possible before attending the Glasgow World Con in August. Hardly any of my choices did well this year. I had voted for the Saint of Bright Doors which I didn't actually finish, but which was so much better than the other novels simply based on character depth, writing at the sentence level and general concept that it was a very easy choice. For me, the rest of the challenge was deciding which of the several nominees were the worst, since I thought several of the nominated novels were actually bad. I did like Arkady Martine's novella Rose/House much better than her Hugo-winning novel, A Memory Called Empire, which for me, was a slog.
Another influence on last year's reads was my participation in two book clubs through a local indie bookstore - one science fiction and one literary fiction. If I had managed to read them all, this would have been 24 of the books I read last year, though I wasn't able to particpate every month. I read 11 of the literary fiction club books, having missed the August book (The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden) because I was traveling at the time. For the SF book club, I missed more, reading 8 of the 12. Of the book club books I read this year, my favorite in science fiction were Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, most of which I read while hanging out at my mother-in-law's last summer, Samuel Delany's Nova, and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time. I had expected to really like Octavia Butler's Wild Seed because I usually like her books, but this one just wasn't my favorite. It felt repetitive in places and sometimes the main character's motivations were hard to understand. For that group, I started but did not finish Annalee Newitz's The Terraformers which I just didn't like and A. Lee Martinez's The Automatic Detective which I really did enjoy, but just didn't have time for, and 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson, which was probably just too long given the time I had to read it. I didn't even start Fire Upon the Deep because I was out of town for a conference. In the lit fiction book club, the standouts were Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton; Marie-Helene Bertino's Beautyland; Louise Kennedy's Trespasses; and Bunny by Mona Awad - except for the ending, which I found really disappointing.
I just barely managed to finish the academic reading challenge, partly by counting books I had read along the way without realizing they had fulfilled the categories. Of those books that I read intentionally for the challenge, the best were Regina Kunzel's In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life (book about mental health/illness); Red Hot City: Housing Race and Exclusion in 21st Century Atlanta by Dan Immergluck (book about housing, homelessness, etc), which I think every person who lives in this city should read; Rebecca Godfrey's Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk, a frightening page-turner, which I read for the category of a place I've visited for under a month, since I spent a couple of days visiting a friend in Victoria many years ago, and Rashid Khalidi's The Hundred Years War on Palestine (book by a Palestinian author). Others I read for the reading challenge were also really good, including the The Man Who Caught the Storm about storm-chaser Tim Samaras, who died tragically while tracking a massive tornado in Oklahoma (book about weather and/or weather prediction). Of course, I love Jane Austen I read Northanger Abbey for the category "book written before 1900," and now because of reading her for the academic reading challenge year after year, I have read all but one of her completed novels.
I read some other random books while doing things like flying on airplanes and riding trains. Of these, I really enjoyed Brendan Slocumb's The Violin Conspiracy, which had some predictable turns and clunky moments, but was still entertaining and interesting because of its representation of racial dynamics in the world of classical music. I finally read Percival Everett's sharp and hilarious Erasure prior to seeing American Fiction. I admit to being charmed by Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, which was read sort of for fun and sort of for work. My major guilty pleasure-read this year was Riley Sager's Home Before Dark, which I read on the plane coming back from England. I liked pretty much all the graphic novels I read, but for a new series, I especially enjoyed Amy Chu's new take on Sheridan Le Fanu's classic, Carmilla.
A book that continues to influence the conversation on fascism is Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem which began in the New Yorker magazine in 1963.
Some of Erving Goffman's most important works were published in the 1960s.
Another landmark 1960s activist book is Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, first published in 1961.
Richard Farina's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me , published in 1966, is a 60s classic and one of my favorite novels from my teen years, though I haven't read it in quite a while.
This entry's official song is "Sympathy for the Devil," a 60s song inspired by Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita which was actually written in Russian between 1928 and 1941, though the English translation could qualify as "written in the 60s."
Science fiction also went through a radical transformation in the 1960s. The landmark collection Dangerous Visions (edited by Harlan Ellison) came out in 1967. Several of Samuel R. Delany's more accessible books came out in the 1960s. Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness was first published in 1969.
There are many lists that you can peruse for important fiction and popular non-fiction of the 1960s. Lit Hub is always a great place to look. Here is their list of The 10 Books that Defined the 1960s which is followed by a lengthy list of additional books published in that decade.
When we chose the category book about mental health or illness, I don't think I really understood the potentially huge number of books that could count. This could include works of fiction, studies of individuals, academic books about mental health or illness from a variety of perspectives.
In other words, this list should not be considered exhaustive in any way. Pretty much any honest or reflective book about human experience could be considered a book about mental health or mental illness, though some will be more explicit through framing the subject in those terms. The books listed are the ones that I first thought of, as well as books suggested by other challenge members.
There are some obvious academic classics you could consider,
Freud may get a bad rap as a sexist, and wrong about everything, but his writing is actuallyinteresting and mostly accessible. Reading anything's he's written can provide you with an understanding of the history of psychiatry. His influence on our culture, regardless of how much psychiatry and psychology have changed, remains massive.
Another couple of classic works of theory aim to topple the empire of Freud. These are Foucault's History of Sexuality part one, which takes on Freud's "repression hypothesis" and the entire method of psychoanalysis, as well as Madness and Civilization, which identifies this binary as central to modernity.
Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipusis a major critique of the Freudian model of psychoanalysis that has also been influential in academia.
Alicia Elliot's memoir, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground which connects mental health and illness to Mohawk experience and settler colonialism.
Susan Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted, a literary memoir about the experience of being locked in a mental institution in the late 1960s.
Alan Reeve's Notes from a Waiting Room, published in 1983, is a memoir chronicling the author's 17 years in the UK's Broadmoor mental institution, his eventual escape, and his engagement with radical politics.
Other memoirs that readers in the challenge have read include comedian, Fern Brady's Strong Female Character and novelist, Viet Thanh Nguyen's A Man with Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial. Both of these look fascinating to me. I really loved Nguyen's novel the Sympathizer, and had seen it was out, but didn't realize that the Man With Two Faces is a memoir. A couple of years ago, for a book club, I read Claire Vaye Watkins' I Love You, But I've Chosen Darkness which is about post-partum depression, among other things. I didn't love the book, but it did leave a lasting impression.
Kaysen's book got higher marks than Sylvia Plath's classic novel, The Bell Jar which one of our challengers read, but left non-plussed. I remember being very moved by it as a teenager in the 1980s, but I haven't read it since then, and today if you bop around the web, you will see people assailing it for its casual racism.
I haven't posted here in a while because I've been trying to get some research done and have been having a pretty busy summer. I will get back to posting cateogry recommendations soon. However, the big news is that the challenge FB group has voted on the the 2 10th anniversary bonus extra-credit categories. These are
19: A book about class and 20. A book about natural disaster and/or natural disaster response.
The complete list is here:
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) 10th anniversary bonus categories! 19. A book about class 20. A book about natural disaster and/or natural disaster response
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.
I've been too busy to do a recommendation post for a while, but here I am again wtih recommendations for category 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.
At first I didn't think there would be that many books that would fit this category, but then I realized that there's so much to choose from in this category. There are many books written from an animal's point of view, books about alien animal species, books in which animals figure significantly without being central characters, and science-fiction books about "uplifted animals" who have been genetically modified to have human-like intelligence.
I got some excellent suggestions for this category from members of the reading challenge Facebook group, as well as a new "bookish" social group that a friend of mine has created for his friends that like to read and talk about books without being members of a regular book club. It also just so happens that the science fiction book club that I'm in chose to read a book about uplifted animals for our March meeting, so I got some ideas from that list of options as well.
This post's theme-song is Foals' "Providence"
1. One of my favorite books,and one of the first to be recommended by a member of the challenge facebook group was the science-fiction book, Borne by Jeff VanderMeer. This book began a series and all of it includes significant animal characters, so any of them could count. VanderMeer's interest in animals and ecology would also make some of his other writings work for this challenge, including the excellent Southern Reach trilogy.
2. Another alien-animal series begins with Nicky Drayden's book Escaping Exodus which includes an organic space-ship. It comes recommended by another challenge participant. The same member of the group also recommendsThe Last Animal, which she described as addressing a number of fascinating issues such as cloning, research ethics, grief, and sexism.
3, Because I was reading their review of Borne, Publisher's Weekly's algorithm just suggested this forthcoming book by Julia Phillips, author of The Disappearing Earth. If you can wait until June to read this category, why not try out Bear, which sounds like it's influenced both by ecology and fairy tales.
4. Also from the facebook group, comes a recommendation for Bernard Malamud's God's Grace which, like some of the others listed here is also a dystopian novel, and according to the challenge participant "gets weird."
5. I thought of this entire category because I recently stumbled across the book Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth. It's not written from an animal point of view, at least as far as I know, but the whole thing is about a heist by two egg auditors to "steal a million chickens in the middle of the night." I bought it because the cover caught my eye and then the description made it sound like a lot of fun.
6. There are many classics written from the point of view of animals, and any of them would be great for this category. Consider, for example Watership Down, Animal Farm, Call of the Wild and White Fang; Charlotte's Web, the Metamorphosis paired with lesser-works by Kafka, such as "Josephine the Mouse Singer." There are many children's books in this category, including the Black Stallion books, or, more recently, the huge "warrior cats" series. Just remember that challenge books should be about 200 pages long, so you might need to read a couple to fill the category.
7. The most classic work in the "uplifted animal" sub-genre is Planet of the Apes, which began as a book in French in 1963. Other works to consider in this category, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series, which features a terraformed planet populated by accidentally uplifted spiders and ants, Despite being pretty horrifying as a concept, this book, which I'm currently reading for the SF book club I mentioned, is really good. Some other good uplifted animal books you might consider are Clifford Simak's City, in which dogs narrate the end of human civilization, Lawrence Schoen's Barsk; The Elephant's Graveyard, and Robert Repino's Mort(e): War With No Name, featuring a house-cat turned assassin.
8. Many of the members of the bookish club recently read the short novel, Open Throat written from the point of view of a mountain lion in the Hollywood Hills, which is part of this year's Tournament of Books. They really, really liked it, finding the animal's point of view narrative very interestingly non-human.
9. I've already mentioned this book in my recommendations of Nobel Prize winners, but Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is another great book in which animals feature significantly in the plot without being point-of-view characters.
10. Sigrid Nunez's The Friend is another non-science fiction work in which an animal figures significantly in the plot. This book is as much about relationships among humans as it is about animals, but it explores the importance of animal companions to humans.
I think I'll stop there, but if you find something else that looks good, feel free to mention it in the comments.
Category ten this year is a “book about conspiracies or
conspiracism.” Because of the
research I’ve been doing on opposition to the far-right, this is one category
where I’ve read enough to make some general observations about the scholarship.It’s also a category in which new books, and new
editions of old books come out at a fast clip, so there’s just a ridiculous
amount to choose from. As usual, I’m including a mix of journalistic and more
academic works, though I’ve only included one novel.
My general observation about scholarship on conspiracy
theory is that it’s closely tied to scholarship on populism, and thus tends to
be divided in similar ways to that scholarship. The books that come to the
quickest and easiest condemnations of conspiracy theory are by defenders of
liberal democratic institutions who find both left and right populisms to be
dangerous to liberal democracy. Richard Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style in American Politics, while written mostly in opposition to right-wing populism, also identifies left populism as paranoid, and is the foundational work for most liberal critics
of conspiracy theory. Frederic Jameson’s description of conspiracy theory as a
“poor person’s cognitive mapping” is a Marxist analysis similar to Ferdinand Kronawetter's description of anti-Semitism as the “socialism of fools" (this phrase is often attributed to August Bebel). Jameson rejects conspiracy theories while also advocating for left critique of liberal
capitalism. Since the 1990s, academic analyses of conspiracy theories have
largely aligned either with one of these two central arguments or have been
written against them. Those scholars influenced by post-modern theory oppose Hofstadter
thesis for its own defense of establishment common sense and Jameson’s for what
they see as “dismissal” of popular anti-establishment ideas and over-zealous
rationalism. I would call these recent critics of anti-conspiracy theory
writers as more populist than leftist as they are defending conspiracy
theorizing on the basis that it represents an “anti-establishment” position,
while depicting even left critics of conspiracy theory as aligned with various
“authorities.” They argue for the radical potential in conspiracy theory,
sometimes by pointing out that “real conspiracies” do exist.
My own view is that
left scholars accommodate conspiracy theory and repudiate efforts to disprove
or debunk them at our peril. Conspiracy theory may be understandably
anti-establishment and even exhilarating, but that’s what makes it more
dangerous than more traditional conservative politics. The problem is not that
it is “pseudo-conservative,” to use Richard Hofstadter’s term, so much as it is
“pseudo-left.”The left populist
academic effort to salvage conspiracy theory for as imanent radicalism fails to
account for right-wing populism. I think this blindness to right-wing anti-establishment discourse is related to this group's general emphasis on opposing liberalism (and sometimes Marxism) as more hegemonic than they are.
Their identification of liberal and left enemies as the most important ones means
that they have a relatively simple understanding of right-wing politics. This
also means that their analyses of fascism are similarly wrong-headed.
The conceptual battle-lines in this case are not between
liberalism and populism but between Marxism and populism. Populism is not
“almost” Marxism or on the way there, but this idea causes some leftist writers
on this issue to be overly charitable to conspiracy theorizing for its
anti-liberalism. Rather than leading to more leftist positions eventually, conspiratorial
understandings of power may be helpful in explaining why someone who once
seemed to be on the left - say, Tom Watson in the 1890s - could become such a
vicious right-wing demagogue such a short time later. The answer may be that
the person did not “switch” from the left to the right at all, but was the same
all along – a populist who aligned with the left on some issues, but with the right
on many others. Their underlying analysis was never truly anti-capitalist in most cases, but against specific capitalists, or monopolies, or particular branches of capitalism. Close-reading of these popular "left" thinkers who later shifted right would likely real a consistency in their thinking over time. We don't always see it because many of us just “want to believe” that socialist analysis is more
prevalent in popular culture than it is. But, like specific anti-Semitic
conspiracy theories, conspiracy theories in general represent “the socialism of
fools.”
Conspiracy theories
themselves will more often lead to right-wing xenophobia and anti-Semitism than
to leftist analysis of power. Regardless of whether the theory is held on the
right or the left, conspiracy theory always leads to an impoverished account of
how power works, and thus leads to bad political strategies, if not outright right-wing
xenophobia. My point here is not that there are no left populists or that left
populists couldn’t change over time and develop better analysis, but that
there’s no point in protecting that bad analysis, as if a left critique would
somehow hurt the left, or align with power, or as if conspiracy theory were a kind
of necessary step on the way to radicalization instead of a problem to be solved.
And with that, here are my recommendations for category 10:
1. Naomi Klein’s book Doppelgangerwas the
blockbuster in this category for 2023. It’s the most personal of her books,
beginning with her experiences of being confused with Naomi Wolff, the former
feminist who became an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and now regularly
appears on Steve Bannon’s show. This book will be especially interesting for
anyone interested in public people (such as Klein’s former colleagues Matt
Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, who are never mentioned in this book) who have made
what seem turns from left to right in recent years. She draws on Quinn Slobodian’s work on what is
called “diagonalism” in Germany to explain this phenomenon. Klein’s statement that
conspiracy theorists “get the feelings right but he facts wrong,” is a pithy
and helpful framing of what goes wrong with conspiracy theories.
2. A related book, which I haven’t read, but know a lot
about because I listen to their podcast regularly is Derek Beres, Matthew
Remski’s and Julian Walker’s Conspirituality: How New-Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat. The podcast and the book try to explain how health and
wellness influencers became increasingly conspiratorial around the Covid-19
pandemic. This book will likely be the best one to read if you are interested
in anti-vax politics or Yoga cults, or trying to figure out how legitimate
critiques of “big pharma” can go awry.
3. One of the most frequently cited academics on the
phenomenon of “conspiracism,” and included in the notes of many journalists’
accounts is Joseph Uscinski, who has written a number of books on conspiracy
theories for a variety of audiences. The shortest and most accessible of these
is probably Conspiracy Theories: A Primer. He’s also the editor of a
very big (500+ pp) collection called Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them that provides a good survey of differing academic arguments about
conspiracy theory, from the Hofstadter supporters to the populist critics of
“conspiracy panic.” As with most anthologies, the quality of these pieces
varies, but this is a decent book for getting a sense of how social scientists
in general write about conspiracy theory and belief. Uscinski’s own most
controversial claims are that conspiratorial thinking exists equally on the
left and right, and that the amount of conspiracy theorizing hasn’t changed in
the last few years. He bases these claims on polls that he’s conducted – so
everything rests on whether his polls are reliable.
4. Katheryn Olmstead’sReal Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11 is another academic book that has
become nearly canonical in scholarship on conspiracy theory. Her general
argument is that conspiracy theories by lay-people are related to the existence
of real conspiracies and deceptions by people in power, so much of her book
cites both the conspiratorial language of the government itself and the
existence of actual conspiracies that have justified people’s paranoia. This book is limited by its focus on the
United States and to my view, is overly populist in its approach. That said,
it’s still very much worth reading. The book was originally published in 2009, but the new
anniversary edition (2019) includes a chapter on the 2016 election, and I’d be
curious to see whether Olmstead has become less sanguine about conspiratorial
thinking in recent years.
This week's theme song is Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me"
5. Political scientists Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum’s
A Lot of People Are Saying: the New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy offers a counter-point to Uscinski’s argument
that conspiracism exists equally on the left and right and makes the argument
that conspiracy thinking is more common, and more dangerous than ever, on the
far right. Although it is written by two political scientists, this is a short
and punchy little book written for a popular audience. I haven’t read it, but
it’s in my TBR pile right now.
5. Much denser is Thomas Milan Korda’s . Conspriacy of Conspiracies: How Delusions Have Overrun America. He also takes the
position that conspiracy theories are more a characteristic of right-wing
thought, adopting Richard Hofstadter’s concept of “pseudo-conservatism” in his
introduction. Korda’s is the first major historical account of American
conspiracy theories by an academic since Olmstead’s. He’s not a historian, but
a political scientist, and I haven't read this, but he seems to fall on the more liberal, anti-populist
side, winning praise from Michael Barkun.
6. While it’s not entirely about conspiracy theories, I’m
including Peter Pomerantsev’s book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible on this list because of how well it explains the rise of popular
conspiracism in Russia, given the prominence of Russian disinformation efforts
internationally. This book is based on the author’s work at Russian television
station in the 1990s and connects conspiracism and the Russian government’s use
of media. Pomerantsev has also written a new book called This is Not
Propaganda – you can hear him talk about it with Joey Ayoub on his podcast, The Fire These Times
7. If you want to understand both the origins of Alex
Jones’s infamous theory that the Sandy Hook preschool shooting was a “false
flag” and how that affected the families of children killed there, read
Elizabeth Williamson’s Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy
9. Journalist Anna Merlan’s Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and their Surprising Rise to Poweris an
informative, deftly written, and entertaining overview of recent conspiracy theories,
beginning with 9/11 conspiracy theories and including discussions of Seth Rich
theories, Pizzagate, Sandyhook, anti-vax theories, and UFOs.Merlan also includes a chapter on “Russiagate.”
The book came out in 2019, so it doesn’t include anything about covid-19 or the
2020 election, but it’s got a good general analysis of Trump’s uses of
conspiracy theories and the broad appeal of conspiratorial thinking.
10. Mike Rothschild’s The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, a Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything was the
first of a handful of left reporters’ books on QAnon to come out. It’s a good
guide to understanding the phenomenon and its basic history on the internet.
Although Rothschild does seek to identify the main people driving the “Q”
movement, he is also interested in the rank and file members and how they come
to believe in these bizarre theories. He writes about people who “have fallen
down the rabbit hole” with sympathy and gives advice to readers who are seeking
to help relative and friends leave the “Q” cult.He continues to be interested in
conspiracism’s impact in society. His new book Jewish Space Lasers is
about the Rothschild family and conspiracy theories about them. (As he says in
his by-lines, he’s no relation).
11. Kelly Weill’ s Off the Edge: Flat-Earthers, Conspiracy Culture and Why People Will Believe Anything is a journalists’
account of Flat-Earth conspiracy theories. This book is super interesting as an
exploration of how conspiratorial thinking works, how communities are built
around conspiracy beliefs, and how the internet works to spread even the most
bizarre conspiracy theories. Weill
also writes with practical goals, and includes a discussion of various
debunking techniques and methods that every day people can use to combat
conspiracism.
12. Graphic novel champion and comic writer and artist, Will
Eisner’s last book was his comic history of the creation and circulation of the
infamous forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It’s called simply, The Plot It’s a really remarkable achievement in graphic story-telling and
includes a comprehensive bibliography and notes, as well as introduction by
Umberto Eco.
13. Of all the fictional accounts of conspiracy theories, I
most recommend Umberto Eco’s Foucault's Pendulum. Eco has himself been
interested in the problems of conspiracy theory and has written extensively
about fascism in culture, particularly in response to the rise of the European
New Right. I read this book over 30 years ago, in between my shifts as a linecook, but I remember it as being
something between a wild romp and a philosophical exercise.
