2018 Goodreads Reading Challenge

In 2017, I read 18 books. This doesn't seem like much to me, but then I think about all the proposals, manuscripts, journal articles, and monographs I read for work, and then I feel better.

In 2018, my goal is to read harder and finish 24 books.

Here are the first books I am looking forward to reading in 2018!

Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride

Paul Beatty's The Sellout

Alexander Chee's The Queen of the Night

Gayl Jones's Corregidora

Jaroslav Kalfar's The Spaceman of Bohemia

Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian

Nnedi Okorafor's The Binti Trilogy

And, ReadosaurusText is now on Goodreads!

my read shelf:

How George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four Changed the World

On March 30, I had the opportunity to speak at a local history event. The Third Annual History Soapbox is a venue where ten people have 6 minutes each to persuade the audience that a book has changed the world. This was my humorous attempt to make a case for George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Then the face of Big Brother faded away again, and instead the three slogans of

the Party stood out in bold capitals:

War is peace

Freedom is slavery

Ignorance is strength.

This language of opposites, you will recognize, is the Newspeak doubletalk of George Orwell's Oceania. In the novel 1984, it is the signature means by which the governance reinforces its agenda and policy to keep down the masses. Originally published in 1949, there is no dystopian classic more canonical, and no author who wished so ardently NOT to predict the future, but prevent it. Orwell spins the cautionary tale of Winston Smith's developing consciousness to the tyranny of Big Brother, the omnipresent totalitarian government, who is always watching, always manipulating. In Orwell's 1984, the Ministry of Truth erases history and the Thought Police can "disappear" you without so much as evidence or a trial. They use data mining and surveillance, which kinda explains why Republicans would want to revoke internet privacy rules. But, how can one man fight the oppressive regime? In the end of the book, epically, all are reduced to loving Big Brother.

When I first set out to craft my case that 1984 has changed the world for this Soapbox, I considered becoming goodthinkfullly fluent in Newspeak and then writing an argument completely in Newspeakese. But as I thought through this diabolically clever plan, I made an important realization: a satirical use of doubletalk does not convey humor or purpose when we are in fact living in a time of political doublespeak and alternative facts. So, instead of wit and wordplay, I shall rely on facts----of the non-alternative variety.

Fact: On this very day, Mar 30, in 1984, the US ended its participation in a multinational peacekeeping force in Lebanon

Fact: In 1984, Prince's "When the Doves Cry" was Billboard's #1 song of the year

Fact: The film Amadeus won the Oscar for the best picture of 1984

Fact: These are not the first things we think of when we hear (hand motion) 1984.

What we think of is, oh, wait, was that the name of that super popular Taylor Swift album, you know the one, oh that was 1989? Okay. THEN, we think of George Orwell's book. And, this is because the most notable thing about 1984 is a book about that year, yet predates it. A book that anticipates and predicts, in an astonishingly accurate manner, the rise of a neoliberal agenda, the smoke and mirrors elements of government, and a society complicit in its own ignorance.

Unfortunately for the world, but serendipitous for my purposes here, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, is more prescient than ever after the 2016 presidential election in the US and the developments that have transpired under a Trump administration. To measure the book’s current influence, look no further than a spike in book sales that put it on bestsellers lists everywhere after Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s political advisor, absurdly rationalized misinformation the current president of the United States was dispensing by describing it as “alternative facts” a la George Orwell’s “newspeak” and “doublethink."

But Orwell’s masterpiece changed the world long before the current political climate, and that 1984 had changed the word is indisputable.

Exhibit A:  CBS's long-running hit show Big Brother, hosted by the one and only Julie Chen. Now, what other book do you know of that has inspired a prime time reality television show while simultaneously fulfilling the idea that a bunch of the populous would willingly (and enthusiastically I might add) succumb to having their free will curtailed.

Exhibit B: Twitter says so, so it must be true.

@EKKAH writes: George Orwell 1984 is one of the best books ever written. Book emoji. Heart emoji. #readabookday

@reesnathan on June 25, 2013: Happy birthday George Orwell! 1984 is still hands down the best book I ever read and it comes at a time where it's

significance is huge.

And, now I bring you to Exhibit C: This canonical book is on high school reading lists everywhere. It is often the first book to open up a young reader’s eyes to the possibilities of political dystopia and to encourage critical thinking and skepticism about the social structures around us. Due to the broad readership and accessibility of this book, it has been changing the world of its readers since its publication nearly 70 years ago.

Until now in this county, perhaps we have hoped doublespeak and Big Brother could only be a figment of Orwell’s imagination. Given current circumstances, though, this book is especially changing the world by helping inspire daily resistance against a governmental regime that has jumped out of the pages of fiction into reality.

So, esteemed judges, people's choice, when you make your decision tonight about the book that has changed the world, I invite to you consider these questions to guide you:

One: Which of these books have you actually read?

Two: What other presenter here is sporting an appropriately bookish t-shirt (which by the way, was purchased years ago)?

And lastly, what other book has ever made you so acutely aware of getting your face gnawed off by rats?

There is only one answer, and it is Nineteen Eighty-Four. And remember: Big Brother is watching.

BookExpo America 2016

I had the opportunity to attend BookExpo America, and while I have been to various book events before, none were as big as BEA, and certainly none as commercial. The 2016 Expo took place May 11 to 13 at McCormick Place, Chicago. I went on the last day of the Expo and could not have been more pleased about the fantastic books and ARCs I picked up! It was a smorgasbord of book totes, engaging discussions with book industry folks, and bookish swag (like artistic literary postcards from Obvious State).

One of my favorite takeaways from the meeting was a journal. I do not journal (despite best attempts), but this is a notebook that I just could not resist: it is a novel journal. The lined journal pages actually contain all the lines from classical literary favorites. Available from Thunder Bay Press's Canterbury Classics imprint, these journals are a clever concept and also struck me as well made, with covers soft to the touch. I picked up the Great Expectations journal.

I was also quite excited to learn about a relatively new book app from the same folks that founded the Out of Print clothing company. Their app is called Litsy, and I think think their tagline sums it up best: "Where books make friends." While I've only been using Litsy for the last 2 days since I first learned about the app, it is a bit like if Twitter and Instagram had an adorable little bookish social networking baby. Find me on Litsy with the username @ReadosaurusText, and learn more about Litsy from their engaged Twitter feed @getlitsy.

I cannot understate how incredibly enthusiastic I am about the stack of new books I picked up to read! My first objective was to find the Europa Editions booth--they are one of my favorite publishers because they consistently publish high quality literary fiction from international authors. When I found Europa Editions, I was delighted to discover they were having a signing! In addition to getting a copy of Sergio Y. signed by author Alexandre Vidal Porto, I was also given a copy of Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth. Northwestern University Press had hot-off-the-press copies of The Fiftieth Anniversary Edition of Biography of a Runaway Slave. I picked up a copy of Redskins: Insult and Brand by C. Richard King from University of Nebraska Press. And yes, in the background of the picture, that is a t-shirt for University of Georgia Press's new book, Blood, Bone, and Marrow: A Biography of Harry Crews by Ted Geltner.

I received a number of advance review copies, which I am listing here along with their release dates. Stay tuned for posts about these books!



August 2016

Ulitskaya, Ludmila. The Kukotsky Enigma. Trans. Diana Nemec Ignashev. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

September 2016
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Here I Am. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
Gray, Sarah. A Life Everlasting: The Extraordinary Gift of Thomas Ethan Gray. New York: HarperOne.
Mazzeo, Tilar J. Irena's Children: A True Story of Courage. New York: Gallery Books.

October 2016
Bennett, Britt. The Mothers. New York: Riverhead Books.
Günday, Hakan. More. Trans. Zeynep Beler. New York: Arcade Publishing.
Szalay, David. All That Man Is. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.
Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. New York: The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Professional Development Panel

This morning, at 11 am, it is my honor to present on a professional development panel with Dr. Antoinette Burton (professor of history, UIUC) and Dr. Carina Ray (professor of African and Afro-American studies, Brandeis). The panel will take place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Graduate Symposium on Women's and Gender History. We'll discuss preparing papers for publication, transitioning to the tenure track, and revising your dissertation into a book.

Of course, when the panel was planned, we had no idea that we'd be presenting at the same time as a Bernie Sanders rally elsewhere on campus!

#AAUP2015

The Association of American University Presses (AAUP) met in Denver, Colorado, June 18 to 21, 2015. I travel to several academic conferences each year for acquisitions purposes where organizations meet to network, exchange ideas, promote professional development, and to present ideas about their current findings; the AAUP meeting is not much different. At Denver #AAUP15, people in all aspects of university press (UP) publishing convened, from production and marketing, to journals and design, to business and acquisitions. Much like UPs attend scholarly conferences to exhibit books to their target audiences, vendors that provide services for publishers attend AAUP, exhibiting while AAUP members dipped in and out of panels and catch up with old friends.

The theme of this year's meeting was "Connect, Collaborate," and that is truly what attendees did. To give a sense, I connected with people from press departments at a similar stage in their career, acquisitions editors at all career levels, early career and first time AAUP members, and a cohort of people who are tapped into social networking and the ways we can harness the power of social media for scholarly publishing purposes across a spectrum. There were also some panels dedicated to exploring the possibility of the intersection of scholarly and social. A roundtable panel that I was a part of asked "Should Scholarly Be Social?" Our conclusion: yes. Yes, because our mission as university presses is to disseminate scholarship to the broadest possible audience, and a tweet, a blog post, and an Instagram are in service of this. Yes, because we have to look to our authors and scholars in the fields we publish and take cues from their practices (oh, and how marvelously you scholars are tweeting and engaging in various media). Yes, because we are at a disadvantage if we don't think openly about the newest technologies at our disposal. Another session at the conference, "Scholarship in 140 Characters? Using Social Media in Acquisitions," spoke about social media specifically from the acquisitions perspective. The conclusions here were the same: the opportunities that social networking creates for you to build relationships far outweighs any potential drawbacks to what you might not be able to predict someone might post/share/tweet.

While the conferences panels are structured and offer enriching insights, some of the most valuable opportunities at the meeting are the informal discussions that happen between panels, during breaks, or over drinks. I see this as crucially beneficial on two main fronts. The first is that these candid moments of telling personal stories can bring to light different processes among jobs or presses that can lead to more efficient operations, whether institutionally, departmentally, or individually. The second is that the connections we make within the organizations have potential to grow into friendships and exchanges that will help to shape the organization and the future of university press publishing. To have established relationships that facilitate open dialogue and multiple perspectives prevent the risk of one, monolithic idea of what UP publishing has to be, because this breeds mediocrity and stifles possibility. The collegiality, generosity, respect toward different practices, and general enthusiasm that pervaded the meeting certainly bodes well for an industry that is always being told it is in crisis.

Of course, this post only covers a smidgeon of what happened. No post could adequately itemize the diverse, dynamic, and multifaceted exchanges throughout keynotes, lunches, and panels. Fortunately, the association has some very dedicated Tweeters, so take a look through the #AAUP15 hashtag, whether you are in publishing and looking for more insight into UP publishing specifically, are a prospective author who wants more insight into the functioning of the UP world, or are someone at a UP who wasn't able to attend the conference this year.