I am constantly buying, selling, and trading books so this will be a very flowing list. i also think that these should go in categories, so we'll start with academic books, since they are the focus of this blog as a whole:
And as I was making this list I realized I couldn’t put these out there without explanation, so . . .explanation. I also must admit that making and seeing this list made me indescribably happy. Oooooooohhh books :)
I’ll call this first category my favorites, the old stand bys when I need an additional reference, an idea, something to get the ideas flowing.
Gee “Social linguistics and literacies”
- great discussion on the social nature of learning
Gee "Discourse analysis"
-the power of language
Berlin "rhetorics, poetics and cultures"
-much older but great at talking about how language is situated in contexts, how popular culture has group power, and how a composition teacher must access all this to show students the power of language in the university and the power they already have with language
Gee “How to do discourse analysis: a toolkit” **not even published yet
-just phenomenal, how to figure out and talk about how people use language and what it means, how we create power, how we control conversations, and how we use grammar – all subconsciously
Goffman "The presentation of self in everyday life"
-how to talk about identity and context, helpful when using Gee’s ideas of language and identity
Gray, Sandvoss, Harrington "fandom: identities and communities in a mediated world"
-talks about various forms of fandom
Crowley “toward a civil discourse”
-besides being a former teacher of mine, this book is SO interesting
Dissertation reading
Can you guess my topic??
Breuch “virtual peer review”
-how do we teach and then get constructive criticism in peer review when its online
Warnock “teaching writing online”
-how does teaching transfer from f2f classrooms to the virtual, missing some important discussion on what the web uniquely has to offer, I guess that’s where I come in
Hewett & Ehmann “Preparing educators for online writing instruction”
-they actually say teaching educators online is an option, but not requirement. My school recently did educator training for online classes and it was f2f, so I guess that suggestion is not as off base as it seems in my head. They focus a lot on what the web offers, not enough on online learning and what is missing when we leave f2f
Gee “what video games have to teach us about learning and literacy”
-one of the best books, how videogames influence learning and how we can use that in school to encourage ‘good’ learning ---- really a must read for everyone!
Richardson “blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms 3rd ed”
-tools and online assignments
I love pop culture
These books are an academic’s version of VH1’s “I love the 80’s”
Nunberg “the years of talking dangerously”
Nunberg “talking right: how conservatives turned liberalism into a tax-raising, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, volvo-driving, new york times-reading, body-piercing, hollywood-loving, left-wing freakshow”
Nunberg “the way we talk now”
-very important books that allow discourse analysis to function at the everyday political discourse level. Helps me analyze what political bloggers are doing with the words they choose, and where those words come from. Tracing the history and usage of words can help illuminate their power and the power structure from where they originated.
Blackford “Out of this world: why literature matters to girls”
-she started out to prove girls can easily identify with male leads but would prefer to read female leads and found she was COMPLETELY wrong, reading as escapism aka what the reader has always known
Williams & Smith “the players realm”
-all about videogames, not great but useful
Shirky "Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organizations"
-All the crazy ways people are connected virtually
Johnson "everything bad is good for you"
-all the way bad things like reality television have good qualities
Consalvo "cheating"
-differing opinions on what counts as cheating in a videogame
Mayra "An introduction to game studies"
-various perspectives on current games and what happens when gamers play
Jenkins "Convergence culture"
-how various mediums (tv, music, art) come together in fandom, one of the first celebrations of being a fan
Jenkins "Fans, bloggers and gamers"
-collection of his articles about convergence culture
Turkle "Life on the screen"
-one of the first texts to discuss what happens with identity, language, communication, writing and interacting when mediated through the computer and internet
Salen & Zimmerman "The game design reader"
-all about videogames, what is play, narrative in videogames, videogame design and structure
Barber “Jihad vs McWorld”
-effects of big business
Crooney “Reading with Oprah”
-how oprah has influenced reading, most of this book is really good until the author decides she hates oprah’s book club, and then it all goes down hill
Storey “cultural studies and the study of popular culture”
-one of the first looks at pop culture and how to use it in the classroom
Stinson “Women and dieting culture”
-great book on how society views women’s bodies
Internet studies
How we use the internet
Thomas "youth online"
-all the different things youth and teenagers do online, avatars, games, chat boards
Wellner "The psychology of the internet"
-how the internet affects us
Brown & Duguid “the social life of information”
-how the internet and communication have changed how information functions
Porter "internet culture"
-how culture develops online
McLuhan "understanding media"
-such a seminal work, older generations fearing new technology as a driving force to technology policy, still a very relevant issue ---- it’s best know for the medium is the message, the transformational affect the medium has on communication
Tapscott & Williams "wikinomics"
-how Wikipedia makes money
sellen & Harper "the myth of the paperless office"
-computers don’t really help us use less paper
Core Rhetoric and Composition reading
You really shouldn’t be allowed to graduate without having read these
Goldstein & Machor “new directions in american reception study”
-as reader response theory work this is more literature based theory, but is so important to what readers do with reading and texts that all English majors should read it
Aronowitz & Giroux “postmodern education”
-where do current ideas and current teaching practices come from? A&G tell us
Barnett “teaching argument in the composition course”
-important if you teach from a rhetorical tradition that focuses on argument specific to audience, it’s really the best way to help students in all majors figure out how to figure out how to write (it works for figuring out how to write at work too)
Freire “pedagogy of the oppressed”
-so influential, but so impractical freire finds that all oppressed people can learn the oppressive literacy values and practices and then subvert the oppressor through literacy
Villanueva "Cross-talk in Comp theory"
Vandenberg, Hum, Clary-Lemon "Relations, locations, positions"
Keller & Weisner "the locations of composition"
-Various readings on the purpose of composition classes, how to teach, how to learn
Owens "Composition and sustainability"
-Composition from a specific perspective, sustainability as the key concept to introduce ways of writing and critical thinking
Johnek “composing research”
-research in rhet/comp
Olson & Taylor “Publishing in rhetoric and composition”
-how to figure out how to publish, where
White “assigning, responding, evaluating 4th ed”
-grading and what it means
Lucaites, condit, caudill “contemporary rhetorical theory”
-early postmodern theories in rhetoric
Bizzell & Herzberg “The rhetorical tradition”
-this is THE book on rhetoric, basically creates canonical authors of rhetoric
Foucault "The archaeology of knowledge"
Foucault "discipline and punish"
Foucault "language, counter-memory, practice"
Foucault “The history of sexuality”
-you shouldn’t be allowed to graduate if you can’t correctly pronounce foucault’s name. he is a founding father of the postmodern movement and he revolutionized how we view language and power ---- very influential on Bulter and Gee
Butler “Gender Trouble”
-makes troubling gender a way of understanding how society determines many behaviors, word choice, and actions of people within it without those people ever thinking about why they act the way they do
Burke "a grammar of motives"
Burke "A rhetoric of motives"
-very important for communication rhetoric students, talks about identification and how people work to fit into groups
McComiskey “teaching composition as a social process”
-pretty obvious
McCormick “reading our histories, understanding our cultures”
-culture and writing
Combs “the dao of rhetoric”
-eastern views of rhetoric
Heinrichs “thank you for arguing”
-how pop culture uses rhetoric
Horkheimer & Adorno “dialectic of enlightenment”
-postmodern literature theory
Freud “Totem and taboo”
Freud “civilization and its discontents”
-freud is important to literary theory, especially his early discussions of culture and its formation
Arnhart “Aristotle on political reasoning”
-how Aristotle discusses politics
Aristotle “On Rhetoric”
-the rescuer of rhetoric after plato destroyed it
Zizek “The sublime object of ideology”
-the kernal and how we get close to understanding culture
Nietzsche “on the geneaology of morality”
-this is the famous, oft mis-quoted “god is dead” text, also very influential on butler as a method of inquiry
Belsey “culture and the real”
-more recent postmodern look at culture and how it absorbs outliers
Johnson “Dreamer”
-civil rights text about MLK
Freebody, Muspratt, Dwyer “Difference, silence and textual practice”
-how teaching can silence some and give voice to others
Goffman “Frame analysis”
-looking at context
Campbell “Man cannot speak for her volume 1”
-feminist rhetoric
Mortensen & Kirsch “Ethics & Representation in qualitative studies of literacy”
-lots of super important information about qualitative research and representing people in studies
Benjamin “Reflections”
-as a writer in Europe during WWII very interesting
Mailloux “Disciplinary identities”
-why the English department is politicized the way it is
Literacy reading
Answers to the popular question “what is literacy” the volume really should speak to the kind of answers one receives when reading these
Lankshear & Knobel “Digital literacies”
-great update of ideas of literacies, instead of just literacy=reading and writing, these incorporate ways of being in places as an important aspect of literacy development, a MUST for internet literacy contemplation/discussion
Kalathil & Boas “open networks, closed regimes”
-literacy practices and the internet in various cultures. Really good look at Saudi Arabia and Chinese internet practices
Street "Literacy in theory and practice"
-SO important, the first text to posit literacies and contextual literacy as more than just reading and writing, but reading and writing in specific contexts that always already includes identity and communication
Kress "Literacy in the new media age"
-really important when it came out, but new literacy studies have changed the field significantly
Cushman, Kintgen, Kroll, Rose “Literacy: a critical sourcebook”
-traces the history of defining literacy
Trimbur “popular literacy”
-what counts as literacy in groups outside school
Snyder "Silicon literacies"
-various literacy practices in online communities
Selfe "Technology and literacy in the twenty-first century"
-all about the digital divide
Brandt "Literacy in American Lives"
-again, digital divide
Hirsch "Cultural literacy"
-parents and some educators like Hirsch because he details why kids will fail if they haven’t been exposed to his list of what counts as culture – the problem is he’s pushing a specific version of upper class culture, is very exclusionary – but he has a point about understanding literary references only if someone has been exposed
Selfe & Hawisher “Literate lives in the information age”
-what does it mean to be literate in the computer age
ESL
Research in second language writing
Matsuda, Cox, Jordan, Ortheimer-Hooper "Second language writing in the composition classroom"
-different approaches to writing, writing assignments, grammar
Matsuda & Silva "Second language writing research"
-overview of current research
Casanave “Controversies in second language writing”
-what people are arguing about
Ferris & Hedgcock “Teaching ESL Composition”
-how to teach classrooms with various student populations, especially ESL
Brown “teaching by principles”
-methods and approaches to teaching
Matsuda, Ortmeier-Hooper, You “the politics of second language writing”
-how politics has influenced views about second language writing including politicizing terms like ESL
Books I’ve used when teaching freshmen composition
Langan “English skills with readings 7th ed”
-lots of good grammar instruction work, although the jury is still out on whether direct grammar instruction actually makes a difference
Kirszner & Mandell “patterns for college writing”
-lots of different readings and chapters devoted to different types of writing
Miscellaneous
I’m not sure where these fit. I understand why I have them, and have kept them, but they don’t have a solid home yet
Beowulf – in old english translated by me
-what more is there to say, one of the biggest accomplishments of my life. I was convinced I was an old dog, but Beowulf proved me wrong
Markhamm & Baym “Internet inquiry”
-how to do research on the internet
Freed “learner-centered assessment on college campuses
-how do we make assessment a part of learning
