Reading List: April 2010

After returning from the PCA/ACA National Conference last month, I was contacted by a couple of professors from SUNY Potsdam who are editing a book on digital rhetoric inviting me to submit my presentation as a chapter, assuming I could get it done in under two weeks. Knowing a good thing when it falls in my lap, I jumped at the opportunity, integrating a portion of my thesis with my conference paper in order to make a broader, and more lengthy, argument. So that's how I spent the last half of April and a major reason why nothing got posted here.

Now I have joined a group of colleagues in preparing an article on Facebook & Pedagogy, which will almost certainly be published. Not exactly in my area of research, but a peer-reviewed publication will be very advantageous at this stage in the career. And after receiving a call for papers from Modern Fiction Studies, I am beginning a look at the way the third season of Star Trek: Enterprise dealt with the cultural climate in the US after 9/11. I'm sure I'll find an angle somewhere, and even though I am unlikely to be published in such a prestigious journal at this stage, it's a win/win scenario because I can always send it elsewhere if it doesn't pass muster. It's also nice to sit around and watch hours of Star Trek guilt free.

I also found out this afternoon that I was placed on the wait list for Florida's program, so I am hoping that with the book chapter, the co-authored paper, my analysis of Enterprise and 9/11, and a revised paper I did for a Writing Center Theory & Practice course, I'll be a sure thing come next year.

Anyway, last month I completed 7 books and 4 graphic novels, which were:

• The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
• Queen & Country: Operation: Morningstar by Greg Rucka & Brian Hurtt
• Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
• The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons
• Fables: The Great Fables Crossover by Bill Willingham, et al.
• The Needs of the Many by Michael A. Martin
• Queen & Country: Operation: Crystal Ball by Rucka & Leandro Fernandez
• Reality Hunger by David Shields
• Queen & Country: Operation: Black Wall by Rucka & J. Alexander
• Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith
• Synthesis by James Swallow

Wish I would have had a little time to give these works a proper review, but here's a quick shorthand.

The Good: Wallace, Shields, Simmons, Rucka, Smith, Swallow
The Bad: Willingham, Gawande
The Ugly: Martin

Thoughts and comments are encouraged and appreciated.