Fall Reading Challenge

Thanks to the wonderful Prof. Rebecca Hill, I'm taking part in a reading challenge for academics this fall. Teaching a heavy load, it's all too easy to set both writing and reading aside during the semester. Having a "writing" or "reading" day isn't realistic for me - it's more like an hour here or there. I don't know how we'll I'll do with this list, but filling it out was a lot of fun.

I'm starting with the American Quarterly issue and Kafka. I'm teaching the Metamorphosis for the first time in my composition class, and looking forward to rereading that one. Over the summer I tried to write a little about each book I finished and I'll try to do the same here and on goodreads, for stuff reading for the challenge and other stuff also. 

You can see more about the challenge and other people's lists on Rebecca's blog.  

Professors’ Fall Semester Reading Challenge 2014 - checklist version

Challenge Categories	Author,  Title,  pp. #	Date read	Points
any book for teaching/research 200 pp.	Swapped for J. Baldwin, The Last Interview. J. Baldwin Devil Finds Work J. Baldwin No Name in the Street	Oct. achieved 35 points	15 10 10
book written by a friend, colleague or acquaintance	Chris Schmidt, The Next in Line, 71 page (poetry) Also Anya Ulrich, Lena Finkel	Oct. Oct. achieved 20 pts.	10 10
book by a former  student or former teacher	Nikhil Pal Singh, Black is a Country, 304 pages		10
Entire academic journal including reviews	American Quarterly, vo. 60, no. 2	Oct. achvd 10	10
Book reviewed in the journal above	Ruthie Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, 388 pages.		15
book about a country or region that isn’t part of research or current teaching	Alice Kaplan, The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach, 336 pages		15
academic book you always meant to read or never finished	Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 616 pages		15
Novel nominated for a National Book Award, 2014 (long list, Sept, finalists in October)	TBA when list comes out		20
Book on current events written by a journalist	The Battle for Justice in Palestine, by Ali Abunimah, 224 pages.	Finished 12/31  20	20
Pulitzer Prize winner before 1970 (any category)	Willa Cather, One of Ours, 206 pages		25
Book with “house,” “apartment” or “room” in the title.	Arnold Weinstein, A Scream Goes through the house: 395 pages.		20
3 books on same topic in different disciplines below:			35
History	Stephanie Gilmore (ed) Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the US, 320 pages.
Literary Criticism	Lisa Hogeland, Feminism and Its Fictions: The Consciousness-Raising Novel and the Women’s Liberation Movement, 224 pages.
Ethnography	Rachel Blau Du Plessis and Ann Snitow, eds. The Feminist Memoir Project, 495 pages.
EXTRA CREDIT – Double up in any category above			10

Rules:

The academic books must be at least 175 pages long

Novels must be at least 200 pages long

Any book on the list, except where specified by category, can be a novel

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.

Only one book can be a re-read

Audiobooks are fine as long as it is unabridged and the print edition is at least 200 pages long.

Books must be started no earlier than midnight Sept.2 and finished no later than Dec. 31, midnight.