2021: My year in books

For the fourth year in a row (2018, 2019, 2020), I logged my book reading for all of 2021. Here's the list, followed by some reflection. Re-reads are indicated by an asterisk*.

1. Rewriting Composition — Bruce Horner (2016) - 01.05

2. At the Existentialist Café — Sarah Bakewell (2016) - 01.19

3. Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back — Alicia Cook (2020) - 01.29

4. The Night of the Virgin — Elliott Turner (2017) - 01.30

5. Divine Comedy — Dante Alighieri (1472) - 01.31

6. Scientific Communication: Practices, Theories, and Pedagogies — Han Yu & Kathryn M. Northcut (E) (2018) - 02.02

7. The Lost Girls of Paris — Pam Jenoff (2019) - 02.06

8. Wellness and Care in Writing Center Work — Genie Nicole Giaimo (E) (2021) - 02.21

9. Scientific and Medical Communication: A Guide for Effective Practice — Scott A. Mogull (2018) - 02.22

10. Happiness: A Novel — Aminatta Forna (2018) - 02.26

11. Passing — Nella Larson (1929) - 02.28

12. Love — Roddy Doyle (2020) - 03.10

13. Democracy in Chains — Nancy MacLean (2017) - 04.15

14. Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story: Teaching American Indian Rhetorics — Lisa King, Rose Gubele, & Joyce Rain Anderson (2015) - 04.21

15. The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race — Jesmyn Ward (E) (2016) - 05.07

16. An Illustrated Book of Arguments — Ali Almossawi (A), Alejandro Giraldo (I) (2014) - 05.08

17. The Peregrine — J. A. Baker (1967) - 05.14

18. The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed — Shea Serrano (2015) - 05.19

19. Outline — Rachel Cusk (2014) - 05.22

20. Dinosaur Lady: The Daring Discoveries of Mary Anning, the First Paleontologist — Linda Skeers (A), Marta Alvarez Miguens (I) (2020) - 05.31

21. Zikora: A Short Story — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2020) - 05.31

22. A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance — Hanif Abdurraqib (2021) - 06.01

23. The Night Country — Melissa Albert (2019) - 06.05

24. The Glamourist — Luanne G. Smith (2020) - 06.12

25. The Atlas of Literature — Malcolm Bradbury (E) (1996) - 06.16

26. The Conjuror — Luanne G. Smith (2021) - 06.20

27. In Defense of Ska — Aaron Carnes (2021) - 06.25

28. Slouching Towards Bethlehem — Joan Didion (1968) - 06.28*

29. The Murmur of Bees — Sofía Segovia (A), Simon Bruni (T) (2015) - 07.08

30. A Writing Center Practitioner's Inquiry into Collaboration: Pedagogy, Practice, and Research, by Georgianne Nordstrom (2021) - 07.09

31. Resurrecting the Shark — Susan Ewing (2017) - 07.15

32. The Last Best League: 10th Anniversary Edition — Jim Collins (2014) - 07.24*

33. Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer (2014) - 08.05

34. Basketball (and Other Things): A Collection of Questions Asked, Answered, Illustrated — Shae Serrano (2020) - 08.21

35. The Pricing of Progress — Eli Cook (2017) - 09.25

36. The Overstory — Richard Powers (2018) - 09.30

37. Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School — Mica Pollock (E) (2008) - 10.01

38. 100 Fathoms Below — Nicholas Kaufmann & Steven L. Kent (2018) - 10.09

39. Border & Rule — Washa Harlia (2021) - 10.19

40. The Complete Wilderness Training Book — Hugh McManners (1994) - 10.31

41. Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods — Alexandria Lockett, Iris D. Ruiz, James Chase Sanchez, & Christopher Carter (2021) - 11.06

42. The Lord of the Rings — J. R. R. Tolkien (1954-1955) - 12.08*

43. The University in Ruins — Bill Readings (1996) - 12.09

44. Witch, Warlock, and Magician Historical Sketches of Magic and Witchcraft in England and Scotland — W. H. Davenport Adams (1889) - 12.11

45. Asgard Stories Tales from Norse Mythology — Mabel H. Cummings, Mary H. Foster (2015) - 12.20

46. Macbeth — William Shakespeare (A), Jesse M. Lander (E) (1623, 2007) - 12.31*

47. The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet — John Green (2021) - 12.31

Maybe it’s because I read multiple books at a time, but when I consider what I read over the past year, what sticks with me are parts of books and moments while reading.

Poems 30, 43, 61, 81, 89, 4, 21, 25, and 85 in Cook’s Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back. Doyle’s, “Advice for the agein’ man.” Any part of Powers’s The Overstory that focuses on the arboreal rather than the human characters, especially this line: “By the time an ash has made a baseball bat, a chestnut has made a dresser.” Comparably, when Forna leaned into the foxes, and contrastingly, when Baker reflected on people. Collins’s The Last Best League was even better while sitting in the stands at Wareham Gatemen games because it reified the personhood of the named players, while other rereading allowed for recognition of humanity of near-universally reviled characters (Tom Bombadil, Lady Macbeth).

Perhaps my most important realization: A book about vampires on a submarine absolutely delivers if you go in expecting to read a story about vampires on a submarine.

Some other observations, by the numbers:

Five books were written by people I know or have met. That’s not rare, given my line of work. In fact, a cool dozen of the books listed here could reasonably be considered for work, including one I read as a review assignment. Writing about the books I read, and reading in order to write about them, was something I used to dedicate time and find enjoyment with, and I’m considering ways to make that more of a habitual practice, blending popular and academic genres.

Four of the more enjoyable/insightful books I read were actually new for this year, which is rare, for me: Border & Rule, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet, Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods, and A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance. I've already got a shelf of books I'm eager to read next, which likely means any 2022 releases will have to be added to the back of the queue.

Two of the books were recommended by my daughter, a dedicated and joyful reader. She shared her own annual list with me just the other day, with each physical book spread out on the floor, and noted her top five for the year. Outside of the classroom, or formal group arrangements, reading is mainly a solitary act. But moments of shared reflection with family, friends, and colleagues (Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story: Teaching American Indian Rhetorics) illuminate the value of reading as a communal experience, too.

Finally, less than I set out for. Not included on this list is a great deal of other reading: scholarly journals, comics, online content; The New York Review of Books and Texas Monthly; Ploughshares and The Boston Review. That said, a goal in the upcoming year is to read exactly as much as I recommend whenever someone asks me how much they should read: “more.” 

2020: My year in books

As with 2018 and 2019, keeping track of my reading was one of the simple pleasures of 2020, which for well-known reasons I won't get too deep into here was in most ways a quite miserable year. There was a moment where I envisioned reading more as a result of mostly-staying-home, and although I'm grateful for the safety and thoughtfulness of those closest to me, as evidenced by a few gaps in the reported dates on my list, my reading energy and focus ebbed and flowed.

Here's the list, followed by summative reflection. Re-reads are indicated by an asterisk*.

1. Post-Truth, Lee McIntyre (2018) - 01.05

2. The American Liberal Tradition Reconsidered: The Contested Legacy of Louis Hartz, Mark Hulling, Ed. (2010) - 01.13

3. Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine (2014) - 02.06

4. Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation, Jeff Blake & Sarah Knopp, Eds. (2012) - 02.07

5. Juicy and Delicious, Lucy Alibar (2012) - 02.11

6. Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward (2017) - 02.16

7. The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates (2019) - 02.26

8. The Celtic Twilight, William Butler Yeats (1893) - 02.29

9. Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education, Henry A. Giroux (2019) - 03.03

10. Paradise, Toni Morrison (1997) - 03.22*

11. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Steve Brusatte (2018) - 03.25

12. Nosotras. Historias de mujeres y algo más, Rosa Montero (2018) - 03.25

13. Take Me to Your Paradise: A History of Celtic Related Incidents and Events, Liam Kelly (2019) - 03.29

14. Before the Dawn of History, Charles R. Knight (1935) - 03.29*

15. The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America, Sarah Kendzior (2018) - 04.03

16. The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic, Mahogany L. Browne, Idrissa Simmonds, & Jamila Woods, Eds. (2018) - 04.04

17. Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Angela Davis (2015) - 04.11

18. Unlucky, Zom Barber (2017) - 04.21

19. Neoliberalism's Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital, Adam Kotsko (2018) - 04.24

20. White Rage, Carol Anderson (2016) - 04.28

21. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber (1905) - 05.08

22. The Sickness Unto Death, Søren Kierkegaard (1849) - 05.10*

23. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (1939) - 05.16*

24. Philosophy in the Modern World: A New History of Western Philosophy, Vol. 4, Anthony Kenny (2007) - 05.24

25. Shine of the Ever, Claire Rudy Foster (2019) - 05.26

26. Poems of Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete, Emily Dickinson (2012, 1890) - 05.28*

27. Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?, Maya Schenwar, Joe Macaré, & Alana Yu-lan, Eds. (2016) 06.07

28. Ducks, Newburyport, Lucy Ellmann (2019) - 06.22

29. The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer (2017) - 06.28

30. The Oxford Companion to Beer, Garrett Oliver, Ed. (2012) - 06.28

31. How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi (2019) - 07.03

32. The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert (2014) - 07.11

33. Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020) - 08.13

34. Awful Archives, Jenny Rice (2020) - 09.04

35. National Parks of America, Lonely Planet (2016) - 09.23

36. Welcome to Hell World, Luke O'Neil (2019) - 09.27

37. Radicals in the Barrio, Justin Akers Chácon (2018) - 10.02

38. The Inheritance Trilogy, N. K. Jemisin (2010, 2010, 2011) - 10.21

39. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, Wendy Brown (2019) - 10.31

40. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving (1819) - 10.31*

41. The Hazel Wood, Melissa Albert (2018) - 11.05

42. Hiding in Plain Sight, Sarah Kendzior (2020) - 11.09

43. Refugees and Asylum Seekers: Interdisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives, S. Megan Berthold & Kathryn R. Libal, Eds. (2019) 11.14

44. Capitalism and Disability: Selected Writings by Marta Russell, Marta Russell; Keith Rosenthal, Ed. (2019) - 11.21

45. H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald (2014) - 11.22

46. Undoing the Demos : Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution, Wendy Brown (2015) - 11.24

47. The Travel Book: A Journey through Every Country in the World, Lonely Planet (2005) - 12.07

48. How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (2017) - 12.23

49. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (1843) - 12.24*

50. The Bathroom Sports Almanac, Jeff Kreismer (2017) - 12.31

As usual, a number of reading tasks I took on over the past year were inspired by my professional work; McIntyre, Giroux, Blake & Knopp, Kotsko, Kolbert, Rice, Russell, and especially Brown have already emerged in my writing and teaching.  Relatedly, as the work/life demarcation softens, the job/work distinction ossifies. That is, I'm welcoming certain aspects of my work as more relevant to my personal life and identity, while others become more easily compartmentalized.

With similar intention, much of what I chose to read was informed by the political and public health conditions under which we spent much of the past year (Kendzior, Kendi, Anderson, Steinbeck). Others, I couldn't help but read (or re-read) through that same context (Dickens, Morrison, Foster). Directly related to that mission, my most visited publisher of the year was Haymarket Books —a "radical, independent, nonprofit" out of Chicago, Illinois — with seven completed titles on my list. Most of the HB books are edited collections of previously published material, augmented with updated essays and interviews. In the case of Davis Taylor, I learned that much of what I thought were new ideas about politics and justice were ones that have been developed and tested over decades, often by Black women. Unfortunately, a trend I've noticed over the past year involving folks of predictable political and demographic slants (re: leftist white dudes) is that some of them seem to think that the policies and procedures they're advocating for are brand new and that anyone who doesn't agree with their all-or-nothing approach is an enemy. Now, the "didn't do the reading" criticism is open to critique itself on classist and racist grounds, but when folks come after Angela Davis, as did happen in the lead up to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, then the fact that they didn't do the reading is problematic.

While it would be disingenuous to suggest that this year was worse politically than previous years — more accurate to say that things became less comfortable for the privileged — there was a palpable recognition of how much our communal experiences and societal expectations are precarious and require defense. The National Parks travel guide was a literal and figurative illustration of this. Throughout that slow reading, my mind was moved to Albert Camus's The Plague (on the re-read list for 2021), which begins by observing that a pestilence — which I'm interpreting as a pandemic — as that "which rules out any future." For a long time, I've been wanting to purchase a National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands annual pass, to dedicate time traveling to our shared spaces and encountering the places in between. This upcoming year seems at once like the one it would be least pragmatic yet most needed.

Let's bring this to a close with that slight spirit of optimism. Along with the absolutely lovely Wingspan and my own backyard, The Strange Bird and H is for Hawk formed a multifaceted thematic I hope to build upon moving forward. Related only in title, Ducks, Newburyport was my most rewarding read of the year, and many of you can expect to be gifted that doorstop in the future, hopefully in person. Combining much of the above, along with recent conversations over how schools and teachers should function and what students should read, Sing, Unburied, Sing was my book of the year.

2019: My year in books

Similar to my 2018 list, and once again borrowing from McNely, here’s is my list of every book I read over the past year, followed by brief reflections on some of those readings.

Entries numbered in order that I read them, not in terms of ranking, which I did not do. Re-reads are indicated with an *.

1. On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses by Louis Althusser (1970)
2. Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare (1594)
3. Interior States by Meghan O'Gieblyn (2018)
4. Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman (1910)
5. The Entrepreneurial Intellectual in the Corporate University by Clyde W. Barrow (2018)
6. Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison (1999)
7. Faking the News: What Rhetoric Can Teach Us About Donald J. Trump by Ryan Skinnell, Ed. (2018)
8. Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol (2014)
9. Performing Antiracist Pedagogy by Frankie Condon and Vershawn Ashanti Young, Eds. (2016)
10. Calling My Name by Liara Tamani (2017)
11. Repurposing Composition: Feminist Interventions for a Neoliberal Age by Shari J. Stenberg (2015)
12. Post-Truth Rhetoric and Composition by Bruce McComiskey (2017)
13. Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (2009)
14. The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (431-404 bce)
15. Speak: the graphic novel by Laurie Halse Anderson & Emily Carroll (2018)
16. Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw: Animals, Language, Sensation by Debra Hawhee (2017)
17. Outline of a Theory of Practice by Pierre Bourdieu (1977)*
18. Thunderstruck & Other Stories by Elizabeth McCracken (2014)
19. House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982)
20. Rhetoric and Demagoguery by Patricia Roberts-Miller (2019)
21. Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers by Jackie Grutsch McKinney (2013)*
22. True: A Novel by Karl Taro Greenfeld (2018)
23. The Hike by Drew Magary (2016)
24. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud (1994)*
25. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib (2019)
26. Paper Towns by John Green (2008)
27. Meeting the Universe Halfway by Karen Barad (2007)
28. Borderlands/La Frontera: the New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua (1987)*
29. The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)*
30. This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki (A) & Jillian Tamaki (I) (2014)
31. We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity by bell hooks (2004)
32. If We Had Known by Elise Juska (2018)
33. Goblin Market, the Prince's Progress, and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti (1862)
34. Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli (1986)
35. Corpora and Discourse Studies: Integrating Discourse and Corpora by Paul Baker & Tony McEnery, Eds. (2015)
36. The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith (2019)
37. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1878)
38. The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols (2017)
39. Wildwood by Colin Meloy & Carson Ellis (2011)
40. Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit (2016)
41. Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs by Lisa Randall (2015)

I'm in the fortunate position where my job requires me to read and to read things I find personally fulfilling. So it's never surprising when something I read ostensibly for my work ends up having an impact on how I view and interact with the world outside of work. This past year, Barad's Meeting the Universe Halfway, Roberts-Miller's Rhetoric and Demagoguery, and Stenberg's Repurposing Composition: Feminist Interventions for a Neoliberal Age all played that role.

Others that resonated in with me, some for reasons I haven't completely worked through yet, include: Allende (even though I despised the protagonist), O'Gieblyn, Abdurraqib (who may very likely show up on these lists with each new release), Nichols, and Solint.

In terms of quantitative goals, the infinite horizon remains forever beyond my grasp. But I did re-read some works that have been foundational for my scholarly and personal identity, like Grutsch McKinney, Anzaldua, and McCloud. Doing so helped me reconsider and reassess my understandings and uses of these works, and so I'm going to continue this project in 2020.

Finally, I read a few novels by authors who I appreciate from other forms: Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, John Green of the Anthropocene Reviewed, and Drew Magary (mostly by the late Deadspin). In each case, I was glad I did, and so that's another approach I'll maintain in the new year.

On a pedagogy of critical reflection

I like to think that revision and reflection are significant parts of my pedagogy. Reflective writing can help students retain what they've learned, it can promote transfer to other contexts, and it allows me, as the instructor, to understand and assess a student's writing and research processes. In many ways, I've found student reflective writing to be more useful than whatever product they make for one of my classes. In Technical Communication, a student could complete an instructions document that does not fully meet the assignment objectives, but they can still do well in class -- that is, they can demonstrate their learning -- by articulating what they think they missed, why they may have missed it, and what they would do next time to improve. Students can elect to revise and resubmit their completed documents based on their reflections.

Similarly, I participate in this reflection process throughout the semester, posting my self-critique and revision ideas to the course wiki, and now, on this blog space. In doing so, I'm not just interested in reflecting on what I'm doing and what I'm asking my students to do, but in doing so critically, approaching reflection as a concept, habitual practice, and complication. The term has achieved a sort of buzzword status across popular discourse and higher education alike, commonly as "critical thinking," which I feel is the crucial skill publics expect professional educators to convey to students. Rarely, in those external conversations, do I hear critical defined in any specific way (partially, of course, because that's not a thing that publics typically do).

So what do I mean by "critical"? And how does it apply to reflection? Since it's where I situate myself disciplinarily, I try to embrace the connotation used within Critical Discourse Studies, which Mautner (2009) summarizes as, "unveiling and challenging  taken-for-granted assumptions about language and the social, as well as recognizing discourse as a potentially powerful agent in social change" (pp. 123-124). With this definition as a guidepost, I encourage students to reflect not only on their work, but on the course and assignment, including through lenses of accessibility, alignment, and process. Applying that definition to my own reflective writing, I'm attuning myself to the ways my teaching and assignments create space for students to challenge institutional hierarchies, but also how my teaching reinforces those structures.

Just composing this post is leading me to two lines of inquiry. First, how are my assignment designs leading/constraining students to/from reflecting critically? Second, what can we learn from the differing ways that academia and publics define "critical." Next week, though, my plan is to write on the craft branding projects that graduate students in the Theory in Rhetoric, Composition, & Literacy Studies course that I teach are currently collaborating on. One group is making kimchi and the other is making beer. The groups are documenting their processes, with photographs, video, and text, and will next exchange notes so that each group can design branding for the other group's product.

2018: My Year in Books

Whenever someone asks me what I think they (or their kids) should read, and it really does happen often, I answer the same way: “more.” When asked that I read, which happens less frequently, I tend to trip over a more convoluted answer. Kind of like my consumption of beer or music, I approach my reading as contextual and seasonal. There's no one answer, other than the professionally-clichéd "it depends."

Providing evidence that only I saw or cared about, over the past few years, I’ve kept track of the books that I’ve completed reading. I started doing this for a few reasons: create a record of my reading habits, promote more diverse and inclusive reading, and motivate myself to read more.

Miming Brian McNely’s pattern (who also appears on the list), here’s my roll call, followed by brief reflections on the more resonant readings.

1. Open-Access, Multimodality, and Writing Center Studies by Elisabeth Buck (2017)
2. We Gon' Be Alright by Jeff Chang (2016)
3. Oh Beautiful Beer: the Evolution of Craft Beer and Design by Harvey Shepard (2015)
4. House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905)
5. Last Nights of Paris by Philippe Soupault (1928, 2008)
6. The Working Lives of New Writing Center Directors by Nicole I. Caswell, Jackie Grutsch McKinney, & Rebecca Jackson (2016)
7. Sport and the Neoliberal University: Profit, Politics, and Pedagogy (the American Campus) by Ryan King-White, Ed. (2018)
8. Buying into English: Language and Investment in the New Capitalist World (Composition, Literacy, and Culture) by Catherine Prendergast (2008)
9. Brewmaster's Table by Garrett Oliver (2005)
10. Buying In or Selling Out?: The Commercialization of the American Research University by Donald G. Stein (2004)
11. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)
12. Podemos Cambiar El Mundo by Camila Vallejo (2013)
13. Facing the Center by Harry Denny (2010)
14. The Twilight of Equality by Lisa Duggan (2004)
15. We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2017)
16. The New Normal by Benjamin Bratton (2017)
17. Academic Conferences as Neoliberal Commodities by Donald J Nicolson (2017)
18. Remix: Reading Composition & Culture, 3rd Ed. by Catherine G. Latterel (2017)
19. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007)
20. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (2010)
21. Demagoguery and Democracy by Patricia Roberts-Miller (2017)
22. The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet & Sam Taylor (Trans.) (2017)
23. The Aboutness of Writing Center Talk: A Corpus-Driven and Discourse Analysis by Jo Mackiewicz (2016)
24. Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich 92018)
25. They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib (2017)
26. Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (2018)
27. Refugee by Alan Gratz (2017)
28. Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan (2002)
29. Gravity Falls: Lost Legends: 4 All-New Adventures! by Alex Hirsch (2018)
30. Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant (1885)
31. Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy by Anis Bawarshi & Mary Jo Reiff (2010)
32. The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, 3rd Ed. By Charlie Papazian (2003)
33. Silent Sparks: the Wonderful World of Fireflies by Sara Lewis (2016)
34. Around the Texts of Writing Center Work: An Inquiry-Based Approach to Tutor Education by R. Mark Hall (2017)
35. On Location: Theory and Practice in Classroom Based Writing Tutoring by Candace Spigelman & Laurie Grobman, Eds. (2005)
36. The Neo-Liberal State by Raymond Plant (2009)
37. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1818)
38. Networked Humanities: Within and Without the University by Jeff Rice & Brian McNely, Eds. (2018)
39. We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion by Sep Kamvar & Jonathan Harris (2009)
40. House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851)
41. Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and the Advancement of Opportunity by Mya Poe, Asao B. Inoue, & Norbert Elliot, Eds. (2018)
42. Articulating Dinosaurs: A Political Anthropology by Brian Noble (2016)

Above, I described my reading habits as, "contextual and seasonal." What I mean by "contextual" is I tend to plan what I read based on other things going on in my life and the world around me. If I'm to travel somewhere (say, for a conference), I might read authors or novels from/set in that place, such as Franzen and Erdrich in preparation for my short trip to Minneapolis. I do the same thing with music, and there was a Replacements/Prince/Hüsker Dü-heavy playlist.

Similarly, there are certain types of things I like to read at different times of the year. Science non-fiction in the early summer and something my daughter is interested in during the dog days, something Irish in March and something spooky around Halloween. This pattern is not a prescription, and I tend to read for work throughout the year.

Of the 42 books I completed during the 2018 calendar year, some have already revealed that they stick with my for longer. Not sure if any will reach the echelon of Caramelo or Discipline and Punish, texts I've read and reread since first encountering them (coincidentally, perhaps, both were originally assigned readings). But some on the current list have the potential to resonate, a concept which McNely defined as books that forces the reader to “pause, to think, to step back, to wonder." This is a concept I am primed for. Film that resonates for me will negatively occupy space in my mind for a few days after watching. Music resonates for me when I can play it while doing something else (writing, driving, running, etc.), getting occasionally pulled in but not necessarily distracted. When reading, I can measure the potential resonance in a more material way. Whether reading a physical book or on my Kindle, I am a profuse highlighter and annotator. These notes are later transcribed or copied to a file for further reflection. The books that I think resonate for me are those that elicit the most response.

By both qualitative and quantitative measures, much of my reading over the past year has proved relevant to current projects of teaching and scholarship. Open-Access, Multimodality, and Writing Center Studies by Buck, and the edited collection, Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and the Advancement of Opportunity, edited by Poe, Inoue, and Elliot, will not only inform my thinking and writing, they are models of the sort of politically-cognizant scholarship that I hope to emulate.

A line of inquiry that I am currently working through involves analyzing the increasing marketization of institutions of higher education. King-White's Sport and the Neoliberal University: Profit, Politics, and Pedagogy (the American Campus), Stein's Buying In or Selling Out?: The Commercialization of the American Research University, and Plant's The Neo-Liberal State have proved useful for this extended project. The latter of these, in particular, is an excellent example of the "steel man" rhetorical strategy, where one lays out the opposition's argument as completely, sincerely, and good-faithed as possible to ensure that their own counter argument is as conclusive as possible.

Looking ahead to a future project, Articulating Dinosaurs: A Political Anthropology by Noble worked because it provided a thorough analysis of two topics of personal interested -- dinosaurs and materialism -- but from a disciplinary perspective of anthropology that I am less familiar with.

After occupying years as a nightstand coaster, I finally finished Brewmaster's Table. Not limiting the category to beer, Oliver is among the best at creating written descriptions of physical experience. Doubled-up with my binging of The Handmaid's Tale television series, Future Home of the Living God by Erdrich was a little too much reflected by the current political moment to be taken on its own terms. Perhaps my favorite thing I read all year, Abdurraqib's They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us made me care -- deeply -- about Rick Flair and the Wonder Years' Suburbia I've Given You All and Now I'm Nothing, two pop culture artifacts I couldn't tell you much about before.

Bridging personal and professional interests, The New Normal by Bratton and Demagoguery and Democracy by Roberts-Miller are both concise yet thorough, articulating complex and contemporarily relevant arguments. I expect both to show up on my reference and course readings lists soon.

Finally, my daughter was assigned Refugee for her summer reading last year, a project that the whole family assumed. For her, it kicked off two fascinations: She's since read three other books by Gratz, and she has become simultaneously intellectually and politically invested in learning more about human displacement and movement. For her summer reading project, she drew parallels from the book's narratives to the contemporary issues of Central American migrants and the Mexico/US border. Her comparison of policies enforced by the current presidential administration and the rejection of the MS St. Louis do not reflect positively on the US.

Nobody asked for this

June 4, 2014. That was the last date I had published to this blog. Although not reflected in the current role of seven posts, it's a project I started way back in (I think) the summer of 2002, when I first moved to the Rio Grande Valley.

Over that run, I rebranded the blog a few times over, pivoting away from opinionated ramblings about sports and music to create a more focused journal reflective of my emerging professional identification. That did not stick, likely because I was already busy doing -- and writing -- other things.

This year, blogging is a practice I'm going to take up again. Some motivating factors/objectives:

Not everything I want to write about "fits" within my current research agenda. Presently, my academic writing is centered on research projects relevant to writing center work, with other major projects situated within technical communication and writing studies. But there are other things I'm interested in, some that I can fit into my scholarly agenda (soccer, paleontology), and others that are more tenuously connected (the current political climate, popular music). Blogging will provide me with the space to articulate and hash out ideas and perspectives that might not fit within the current scope of my professional work but that I'm interested in, nevertheless.

I'm an avid Twitter user, or at least responder, typically tripping over myself to revise pithy posts that receive scarce (but appreciated!) engagement. Same goes for Instagram and lurking the comments sections of the post-Gawker suite. While the actual benefits of these practices require further study, one clear drawback for my own writing is that because of the combined kairotic constraints of limited space and need for a quick turnaround, other online modes are less conducive for informed, thoughtful, and contemplative response. I want to respond to the things I read, but I want to do a better job of it.

When I do respond, I hope this blog allows me to receive feedback on germinating ideas that could develop into more substantial projects. At its best, I think, this blog will function as a sort of laboratory or greenhouse where I can work through ideas that could potentially sprout into more substantial, and professional relevant, writing projects. In order to facilitate this growth, I plan on leaving a slightly-curated comments section open, steadfastly ignoring the quantitative temptation of page views or engagements.

Even if no responses come, I still want to cultivate the habit of writing every day. As mentioned above, I do a lot of writing already, but like any practice (see also: running, second language learning, guitar, house maintenance) it can become too easy to skip a day, and then two, and then weeks without progress. Not sure that I need the post counter to reach 365 by this time next year, but writing every day is an attainable goal.

If I can do these things like write about things while maintaining a focused tone informed by my professional qualifications, I might actually contribute something of value here.