Bout of Books Day 1: Setting some goals

Today is the official start of my research leave, so I'm mostly reading for my research project this week. This month, I'll be reading works related to early observations and analyses of fascism by leftists and liberals from the 1920s through the early 1930s. My emphasis is on the U.S., but I'm reading books about European parties and thinkers who also influenced U.S. anti-fascists. The first book I'm reading is Enzo Traverso's Marxists and the Jewish Question though I'm currently reading an earleir edition than the one in the link. Also this week, I'm hoping to read some of Ernst Mendel's collection of Trotsky's writing about fascism and early essays from the collection Marxists in the Face of Fascism. Another book on my list is George Seldes, Sawdust Caesar one of the earlier U.S. anti-fascist texts. There's more on the TBR including a couple of anthologies on travellers in the Third Reich, along with the first section of the recent anthology by Christopher Vials and Bill Mullen, The U.S. Antifascism Reader. In the mornings and before bed, I'll be reading little bits of Lucy Foley, The Hunting Party , and when I'm working out, cleaning, or cooking, I'll be listening to Alyssa Cole's triller about gentrification in Bed-Stuy, When No One is Watching. I have no idea how much of this I'll be able to read in a week, but I'll track what I do here for Bout of Books.

Bout of Books 30 Sign-Up

 It's 2021, and I hope to be spending most of this year writing a book, but I'll still be reading, so I decided to sign up for Bout of Books 30, which runs from Jan 4 - 10 this year. I've done this readathon a number of times, but since it often falls during the first week of classes when I'm teaching, I rarely wind up reading a whole lot during the week. This year, I'm on a research leave, so I'll be setting research reading goals for the week and hope that the readathon will motivate me to meet them.

For those that don't know what Bout of Books is... here you go: The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 4th and runs through Sunday, January 10th in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are reading sprints, Twitter chats, and exclusive Instagram challenges, but they’re all completely optional. For all Bout of Books 30 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team by clicking the button below:

Reading and Listening: E. Burke Rochford on the Hare Krishnas & George Harrison

 I'm still working on finishing the 2020 Academic Reading challenge before 2020 is over. I just have a few categories to go and am hoping to squeeze them in around some other "for work" reading that I also want to do before the year is up. This morning I started what seems like it will be a fascinating account of field work in the Hare Krishnas in the 1970s from sociologist E. Burke Rochford Jr., Hare Krishna in America. 

  According to his introduction, he began doing research as a graduate student in the mid-1970s, but was unable to get the group to treat him as a researcher: 

Instead of accepting my repeated assertions that I was a researcher, the devotees invariably  refused to accept my explanation, seeing me instead as a 'spirit-soul' who had been sent by Krishna. I saw myself as being there to conduct research, that was my problem, and was of little or no concern to them. 

What is a better pairing for this spiritual enthusiasm that the author experienced that George Harrison's Hare Krishna paean, "My Sweet Lord". By the time I get to the end, "I Am the Walrus"  may be the best pairing, but I guess I'll find out. 

Academic Reading Challenge Categories for 2021

 The dreadful year 2020 is almost over, which means it's time to start planning our academic reading challenge for 2021.

I hope you'll join us for this fun experiment in resisting the push to academic over-work, over-specialization, and time-rationing and give yourself permission to read academic books that aren't immediately obviously instrumental for your next project.  Those books you bought at a book exhibit two years ago? time to open them up and start reading! That book your colleague wrote that you bought but didn't get around to yet? It's category #1. 

 The Covid-19 pandemic has created burdens and opportunities for readers, so this year instead of matching a song about books and reading with the challenge, I'm pairing Randy Newman's Corona-virus song from April "Stay Away From Me" with the official Reading & Listening post for the 2021 challenge. The vaccines may be here, but we're not done with this yet, so please follow Randy's advice. If you watch the video and listen to the words of the song, you may also find you agree with me that Newman is prescient about the things that would come to define the social-distancing experience for many of us. Finally, he's got a bookcase behind him and books piled by the piano (is that Borges or Berg in the title face up on the bench?)  making this video a great way to start thinking about your next year of reading. Glad to see he - or the Venus in Sweatpants mentioned in the song - is a fan of Elena Ferrante, or at least Europa Editions.

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.


We have a Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/160467571369051/
  In this group we talk about the challenge categories for the year and occasionally discuss what we've read and plan to read 

There is also an academic article about this challenge here: https://www.academia.edu/38104347/Read_Another_Book_Repeat_When_Necessary

Rules

The challenge starts on January 1, 2021 at midnight and goes till Dec. 31, 2021. 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 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 a memoir of a coup for both the memoir about a coup 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 200 pages long.

Books must be started no earlier than midnight 1/1/21 and finished no later midnight 12/31/2021

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

Total possible points for 1-15: 200

Total possible points for all extra-credit: 250

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

2. Classic in your field that you’ve never read or book you see cited often but have never read 10

3. Book about the place you grew up 10

4. Book about place you want to travel to when this mess is over 10

5. History of medicine or illness 20

6. Book about isolation, quarantine or lockdown 20

7. Book about LGBTQ+ politics or culture outside the U.S.A. 20

8. A book recently translated into English 20  

9. A book about visual arts or the biography of an artist 10

10. A book about a place, time, concept, or topic adjacent to what you study 20

11. Book Published before 1900 10

12. A memoir about politics, revolution, counter-revolution, or coup 10

13. Book about pre-modern trade routes 20

14. Graphic novel, graphic non-fiction, or collection of comics 10

15. Nonfiction book about animals and/or animal psychology 20

 EXTRA CREDIT:

Extra Credit: Award nominee that didn’t win the award 10

Extra-Extra-Credit: Award winner or nominee that won an award that you’d never heard of 20

Extra-Extra-Extra Credit: Book about a commodity 10

For those of us who are just extra: a satire 10 

Alvvays for EC Comics

 I was just listening to an old "best of 2014" mix I made for friends back then while reading Qiana Whitted's excellent Eisner-award winning book, EC Comics: Race, Shock, & Social Protest and this old song by Alvvays came on, and I noticed this verse:"And when the wheels come off / I'll be an astronaut/ But I won't be lost in space / I will be skipping rocks"

Bridging the distances between 2020, 2014 and 1953 when EC did the original comic "Judgment Day!"  in Weird Fantasy, I'll call this a good reading/listening moment. 

Reading and Listening on Fall Break

Reading Annalee Newitz, The Future of Another Timeline and listening to Mise en Scene "Dance My Life Away" 'cause I needed to use some emusic credits. They're a good match even if their "About Love" which doesn't seem to be on Youtube had a more close match on the lytics. The sound of Mise en Scene reminds me a bit of the Muffs: melodic, poppy, sort of retro of 1960s "girl groups" mixed with grunge. And since thisn novel is about time-travel and features a lot of nostalgic representations of the riot grrl scene of the 1990s, I'd say contemporary bands with a retro feel make sense. And Mise en Scene are kind of double retro. 

Of course Newitz helped create a band named after the fictional band that she created, Grape Ape, so here's a video of them singing the song "What I Like to See" featured multiple times in the 1992-1993 sections of the book. It's nice to see Charlie Jane Anders behind the bar in this video too. 

Bout of Books 29 - August 17-August 23rd

It's the first week of classes at Kennesaw State, and as has been the case for a couple of years this coincides with the August Bout-of-Books readathon. Since I will be reading anyway, even if it's less than I really want to, I'm signing up again. Some goals for this week: finish the book I'm currently reading by Kate Aronoff, et. al: A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal and get enough of Samuel Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand to not embarass myself in the SF bookclub meeting tomorrow night. After that, it will be time to see how much headway I can make in Pierre Broue's massive tome on the German Revolution of 1917-1923. 

 What is Bout of Books?  From the organizers: 

The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 17th and runs through Sunday, August 23rd in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are daily challenges, Twitter chats, and exclusive Instagram challenges, but they’re all completely optional. For Bout of Books 29 information and updates, visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team